What makes us feel good about our work?

My efforts to encourage behavioral change at work are still undergoing.
This time I showed the team the following video that talks about how motivation is not about paying high salaries but rather making employees feel valued and giving them the sense that their work is meaningful.

I think it made people somewhat outraged because a lot of our efforts goes into garbage.

Instead of starting a bitching session I tried to stimulate thinking about the following questions:

1. How can we try to optimize our efforts (ex: not spend too much time on things that most likely won’t be used)?

2. How can we influence our leadership to focus more on better job design and be more tuned to our needs overall?

3. What are the lessons we can learn for our own future managerial styles?

I don’t know if I really inspired them to think further but they adamently asked me to show the video to our bosses and senior management and influence HR to put more effort on people development (good luck!).

I am trying to influence change from the bottom but it seems that people have this really strong need for guidance from above. This is not surprising , for the high power distance country that Brazil is.