A pair of faculty members at Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business were recently awarded $50,000 to fund an 18-month research project by BetterUp and its Center for Purpose and Performance.
Co-investigators on the project are Assistant Professor of Management Kate Zipay, who is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Working Well (CWW), and Allison (Allie) Gabriel, the Thomas J. Howatt Chair in Management and CWW faculty director. Their award proposal, “Intuitive Working™: A New Lens on Work Consumption,” contributes to the growing science-practice rebellion against 24/7 work cultures, offering a more sustainable work system that encourages employees and organizations to ask: When have employees done enough work? Their research introduces a novel perspective on work that will enable employees to foster a healthier and more adaptive orientation to work.
According to Zipay and Gabriel, Intuitive Working™ represents a motivational approach that drives work processes for employees, wherein employees are in tune with their own work-related needs and demands, rather than driven by external and emotional cues (e.g., organizational norms, social pressure, feelings of guilt). Their research builds on insights from intuitive eating — an approach to eating based on hunger and satiety cues rather than situational and emotional cues.
In this transformative shift in thinking about employees’ approach to working, Zipay and Gabriel argue that work consumption shares many psychological underpinnings similar to how people choose when, what, and how much to eat, allowing employees to reframe work as an autonomous and adaptive process. As such, Intuitive Working™ reflects an approach to work similar to maintaining a “balanced diet,” giving a theoretical and practical antidote to the damages of excessive work and the untenability of modern work cultures.
The objective of the project is to articulate a foundational understanding of Intuitive Working™, explore how it is enacted and perceived, develop a valid assessment of it, and empirically examine how Intuitive Working™ influences well-being and performance. As such, it offers a radical departure from the current literature, helping curate what Zipay and Gabriel believe is the next era of employees’ relationship with work.
“We believe our work will encourage employees to craft a healthy and balanced relationship with work that cultivates a heightened sense of knowing when they have done enough — effectively allowing them to walk away from work days feeling 'pleasantly full' and absent of intense burnout and fatigue typical of modern work experiences,” Zipay says. “When employees are able to intuitively work, they will be able to make careful choices about when and what work has been done in a sufficient and fulfilling way.”
The project fits the mission of the CWW and highlights a vital way that the center is conducting cutting-edge scholarship that will help people thrive at work and home. “We see this prize as signaling that our ideas are impactful, and that the work we are doing at the Center for Working Well is important and being recognized by other thought leaders on well-being at work,” Gabriel says.
BetterUp, the human transformation platform and inventor of virtual coaching, founded the Center for Purpose and Performance in 2022. With an innovative research and convening agenda, it drives the center’s mission of partnering with industry leaders to deepen understanding of the intersections of well-being, purpose and performance. The center unites a diverse community of prominent CEOs and CHROs, business luminaries, top academics, practitioners, and BetterUp coaches around groundbreaking research and innovative practices for bringing purpose and performance into the workplace.
The center launched its applied science research competition to enable the application and extension of peer-reviewed research across diverse disciplines. Emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, the intent is to advance the science behind workplace performance at scale, building on the peer review process within organizational behavior and psychology. This award went to top submissions answering the most pressing and important questions around the connection between purpose and human flourishing in personal and professional life.
This work from Zipay and Gabriel will create a deeper understanding of how people can live more meaningful lives, do more fulfilling work, and create thriving organizations. The findings will also be applied to BetterUp’s innovative coaching interventions and AI-powered technology to enact transformation and lasting behavior change for the 750+ enterprise companies providing BetterUp to their employees across 70 countries and in 64 languages. For more information on BetterUp and the Center for Purpose and Performance, visit BetterUp.com.
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.
