What puts the purpose in a purpose-led business? People.

Jordan O'Reilly

Co-founder | CEO at Hireup

Last year, we at Hireup embarked on a project to put our purpose into words. After much exploration with our team and community, we landed on it. Our purpose is to enable the pursuit of a good life for everyone. Plain and simple -this is what guides everything we do. 

Last week, our support-office team held an event we call Hi-Con - a quarterly program of learning, reflection and connection. It included an innovation competition, where our company broke off into teams to come up with actions we could swiftly incorporate into how we work as an organisation to move us towards our purpose - like a new process, ritual or program. 

Hi-con also sees us pulling in wisdom from external speakers, and as the theme of this one was ‘purpose’, we called on leaders from two of the biggest purpose-led players in business - Daniel Flynn, co-founder and managing director at Thankyou, and the director of philosophy at Patagonia, Vincent Stanley. 

Thankyou is a social enterprise that exists to end extreme poverty. Patagonia is ‘in business to save our home planet’. Like us, these organisations believe that business can serve an environmental and/or social purpose - which all sounds very admirable. But within the walls and cultures of these companies, what does purpose look like? 

"A lot of people are painting purpose on the outside [of their business] and trying to figure out how to get on the inside. We’re not super fascinated by purpose in the marketing space. We see that purpose - the true secret of it - is unlocking talent.”

Daniel Flynn sees purpose in his team members. “It unlocks something in all of us - and we’ve seen that play out in Thankyou,” he said to our team last week. “A lot of people are painting purpose on the outside [of their business] and trying to figure out how to get on the inside. We’re not super fascinated by purpose in the marketing space. We see that purpose - the true secret of it - is unlocking talent.” 

We’ve seen this at Hireup, too. Ben Armstrong, our first ever Hireup support worker, went from rolling out banners at disability expos to managing our Data & Insights team. Jess Timmins, who had never worked in the disability sector or tech before, now manages 80 people in our Service team. To quote Daniel again: “The cause isn’t some ethereal thing. It's a true awakening of, ‘hey this is part of my purpose and I can use my talent and skill to change the lives of others’.” 

Companies don’t have purpose - the people working in them do. But how do you sustain a uniform purpose in a global company, with thousands of employees, like Patagonia? 

According to Vincent Stanley, director of philosophy at the almost 50-year-old outdoor apparel giant, consistency is key. “We’ve been very consistent in our message - and we’ve delivered on what we talk about, for the most part - and that combination has built a layer of trust. There’s so much bullshit and inauthenticity in business. People respond, probably more than they should, to very human statements about what you’re doing and why.” 

At each of their stores they’ve purposely kept things local - as anyone who’s visited the Patagonia store in Torquay, Victoria, and heard the floor staff talking about their morning surf, can attest. 

“What I loved about this was that by 10 o’clock, it had gone to the CFO,” said Vincent. “Then it went to the COO and the [founding] family, and by one o’clock we were committed. We reversed the plan for all the stores around the world and we donated 100% of profit.” 

Instead of bringing in the $2 million they had forecast for that day, Patagonia made $10 million. Every dollar of which went to its purpose of saving our home planet via donations to environmental causes. This is the kind of impact that a purpose-driven person, working in a purpose-driven business, can make. 

The timing of Vincent’s story was on point, too. The day before we heard from him I was contacted by Victoria Lee, our new Director of People and Culture at Hireup. She said: “People are having a really difficult time at the moment. I think a day off in the next fortnight would go a really long way.” So that’s what we did. We told our 200-plus team at our support office to take a day off and use it to connect with whatever a makes life good for them.

Purpose in a business is hard to pin down, but I agree with Daniel and Vincent’s thinking that the place to look for it - and nurture it - is in its people. Not in its marketing campaigns. And as our company grows, and it gets harder to comprehend the difference one employee can make, I ask our team to remember the words of anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small, committed group of people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

This article was first published on Jordan's LinkedIn page