Winnie Jiang: How to Find, Pursue, and Sustain Meaning at Work

Disrupt Your Career Podcast Transcript

Winnie Jiang – How to Find, Pursue, and Sustain Meaning at Work

 

January 2022

Claire Harbour

Today we are welcoming to the Disrupt Your Career podcast Winnie Jiang. Winnie is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. Her research focuses on the dynamics of meaning-making at work, work as a calling, career mobility and transitions, as well as personal and professional development. Before joining INSEAD a couple of years ago, Winnie did her PhD at Yale. Winnie, thank you so much for joining us today.

 

Winnie Jiang

Thank you for having me.

 

Claire Harbour

Thank you also for making the time in a very special place in  time in your life, when you’re very shortly going to be giving birth. It’s hot and sweaty in Singapore, you’re tired, so we’re particularly grateful that you’re joining us today. Thank you.

 

Winnie Jiang

Thank you. I’m really looking forward to this podcast and the conversation.

 

Claire Harbour

Excellent, good. Well, let’s start with something really simple and personal. I’d love to know about your own career journey. You started by studying a liberal arts degree where you included psychology, economics, and maths, and then you went on to a PhD in management, concentrating on organizational behavior. Tell us about how much this was through serendipity or by design, and what got you interested in psychological issues in management, and more especially the topic of meaning at work?

 

Winnie Jiang

Sure. The beauty of being in a liberal arts college is you can get exposure to a variety of different disciplines that you did not really know much about. In my college, most students do not feel the pressure to have to choose a major early on, so I really just enjoyed the luxury of taking as many classes as I like, and that includes classes in psychology, economics and math, as you mentioned. And when I was taking these classes, I ran into one of my favorite professors in college, and she’s an Industrial Organizational, or what we usually call IO psychologist. So, like many of the people out there, what we choose to pursue sometimes is heavily influenced by one of our favorite professors or teachers.

Claire Harbour

Right, teachers often do it.

Winnie Jiang

Exactly, yeah. So for me that’s the case. You could call it serendipity or you could call it by design, but I was heavily influenced by this professor, who I like very much. And it’s through her and a class she taught on IO psychology, that I discovered my interest in studying people’s attitudes about and their behaviors at work. And I then began to find books, articles to read to learn more about the different focuses scholars in this field are focusing on. And I remember running into this quote by Studs Terkel, and this quote goes like this—I read it so many times, I don’t even need to go find it, it’s just so deeply rooted in my mind—the quote goes: “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” And many people have this experience of reading something that suddenly lights up above in their head, and that was exactly how I felt when reading this quote. It just sparked my curiosity to learn more about how people experience their jobs and careers so differently. And it made me want to know how and why some people work just for money, while others search for meaning, and how the different attitudes they have, the different ways they perceive their work, affects their behaviors. So I’ve decided to pursue a field where I could continue to think about and study these questions ever since. Organizational Behavior seems just the right field, and it’s expansive enough where many scholars are interested in studying the questions I mentioned, and I was just very lucky to be able to join them. So yeah, that was kind of the summary of how I got interested in this field and the topic of meaning of working, in particular.

 

Claire Harbour

Fantastic. That’s a beautiful story. And absolutely the driving influence of that isolated, brilliant teacher who inspires is incredibly strong. And it’s wonderful to hear a happy ending to that story.

 

Winnie Jiang

Yeah, exactly. And there’s moments where you read something, you meet somebody, you watch a movie that sparks your interest in a certain profession. So yeah, I guess one lesson, if you may, from my experience that I learned is just pay attention to these small encounters that you have in life, right? If you are looking for inspirations for new career chapters, pay attention to what sparks your curiosity, while you are reading a book, or watching a movie or meeting different people. Those could be a really great source of information that tells you why you are interested in what you want to learn more, and what you want to pursue in your next career.

 

Claire Harbour

Very true. That overall mindfulness of what’s going on in our mind, and our body as we go through life is so important in informing our decisions, whether about career or anything else. But career obviously takes up such a big space in our lives, that it’s one of the most important aspects to be intuitive about, that’s for sure. Since you did your PhD at Yale, you’ve become an assistant professor at INSEAD in the Singapore campus, and you’ve been there for about two years now. In fact, you told me earlier that you actually haven’t left Singapore at all during that time, given the context of COVID and everything else. Tell us about what the experience has been like so far, and how you’re finding meaning in this job.

 

Winnie Jiang

Sure. So although I have changed the title, my affiliation, and the physical location, the main part of my job hasn’t actually changed much, which is doing research. So while I’m still spending most of my time doing research, being at INSEAD has incredibly boosted a sense of meaning for me personally, because INSEAD offers junior faculty like me very generous research support, and the colleagues here create, to me, a superb intellectual environment, for me to develop new ideas. These resources really make me feel supported, valued, connected, and give me a sense of competence and belonging, all of which help to create, or make a job feel more meaningful to any individual, as research has shown. And what has been a major change, though, is that I have begun to teach my own classes. And through teaching, I see the value of research in changing how people see and think about their work life and the world they live in. So I’ve had students who after my class came over to tell me how taking my class has transformed them, which is extremely rewarding to hear as as an educator and as a professor. So if I have to summarize how I have been finding meaning in this job at INSEAD, I would say, I do so mainly through three ways. First, continuing to do research on questions that are interesting and important to me. So there’s this continuity of the things I engage in, the tasks I engage in, that are interesting and important to me personally. And second, through connecting with colleagues who support and inspire me, creating new, meaningful, high-quality connections. And finally is through making an impact on my students’ life. And through these three ways, I feel like this job has been really, really meaningful.

 

Claire Harbour

That’s a tremendous achievement in just two years, and two very unusual years that that. Well done. As you think about the attitudes to career that you’ve observed in Singapore, in the US where you studied, in France where your school is centered even if you don’t necessarily deal with that too much, and your native China and beyond, what sort of differences do you see in terms of attitude towards career agility?

 

Winnie Jiang

I understand career agility as a person’s ability to adapt him or herself to meet new challenges in their working career, and to be honest, based on my personal observations and impression—again, not based on any actual data or evidence, just my personal experience in these different countries and cultures—I don’t think people from these four countries show much difference in their career agility. It seems that universally, people don’t like changes, especially changes that require them to change something about themselves. Now, it seems it’s part of our human nature that we are generally unwilling and therefore find it hard to admit what we have been doing is no longer working and some changes are needed, because we are afraid of failing or being seen as a failure. But as we all know, changes are becoming more and more prevalent, almost inevitable during the course of one’s career, so developing career agility, which I believe is fundamentally about overcoming our own fear of failure when making any changes in our career, is crucial for everyone, regardless of which country you are from, or working and living in.

 

Claire Harbour

Absolutely. For sure that big feeling that you ignore when you know something’s wrong, but the pain of change is even greater, at least in your own head, that’s what you and we are really working with, isn’t it? The obvious (to most other people) need to change, but the resistance to doing so from the inside is such a great and powerful thing, and one which certainly we love to work with and challenge, and get people to break out of the trap they’ve worked themselves into, and on to the next thing.

 

Winnie Jiang

Yeah, regardless of which culture you are coming from, or which country you have spent most time living in. There are people in some countries and some cultures that are more adaptable, and more welcoming of changes, but some others who are not. To me, I see more individual-based differences than country- or culture-based differences. And there are certain things we can learn from individuals who make career changes transition seem much easier, and see what kind of lessons they can provide for the rest of us who find it more difficult.

 

Claire Harbour

Absolutely, that’s one of the areas we really focus on. Our work is focused entirely around single stories, individual stories, and taking those stories from A to Z in a transition and learning from that, taking the wisdom from each individual story around the theme, and finding the hints, the pointers, the wisdom that come from those. So I think you’re absolutely right, that in the end, it’s transitions and change one by one, regardless of the social and societal pressures that may exist around that type of change.

 

Winnie Jiang

Yeah. There might be social or cultural differences, it’s just I personally haven’t detected it based on my own experiences. But it would be wonderful if we do some future research to look at how people in different cultures manage career transitions, whether they manage career transitions differently, how they do so differently. It could expand our knowledge about career transitions because right now, as you probably already know, most of the research that has done on career transitions is really focused on Western contexts, and I would love to see more research—and I personally would love to do some additional research—looking at career transitions in Asian or other cultural contexts.

 

Claire Harbour

All right well, we better get talking after this podcast then! Let’s see what we can do together on the subject. In the meantime, let’s turn towards the great resignation. Of course, everybody’s talking about it, everybody’s hearing about it, especially in the US, but pretty much across the world. On the global level, it really does look as though the pandemic has led many people to rethink the meaning of work in their lives. What’s your take on this situation?

 

Winnie Jiang

This is definitely not the first time we see such phenomenon, although with the term Adam Grant  has come up with, the “great resignation’, it seems like more and more people are starting to notice and talk about it. But after 9/11 in 2001, for example, and the financial crisis in 2008, there were also a lot of people leaving or changing work during those times of crisis. And the reasons or motivations behind any resignation amidst some crisis—either at a societal level, such as the pandemic we’re currently going through, or at a personal level, such as the loss of a loved one, or both—the motivations or reasons behind resignation amidst these different types of crisis are likely different for different people. But I suspect there are two primary types of reasons or motivations. Some people might already be thinking about leaving or changing work before the crisis happens, and crisis simply propels them to turn their thoughts into actions. So they could be realizing that life is short, and they should probably start taking actions sooner than later. So this idea of change, changing some parts of their career making some personal changes, already existed there in their mind, but crisis kind of pushed it to happen. Or crisis is maybe just making things easier for these people, right? Think about it, when there is no crisis, people probably find it uncomfortable to go to their boss and say “I’m going to quit.” And they have to come up with a reason to explain why. But when there is a crisis, they can say “I will just blame the crisis, because there’s the great resignation, a lot of people are leaving, and I feel that I want to do the same.” So it’s basically making things easier for them to do something that they already planned or wanted to do.

For others, it is the crisis itself that makes them reflect on what they truly want for their life, or it’s the crisis that triggered them to reassess the importance of different things in their life. And such reflection can make them realize their job, the job they’re currently doing is not entirely aligned or compatible with the kind of life they want. And I think either type is fine as the individuals are getting closer to the kind of life they want. So either it’s because you have the change already happening in your mind and now you’re turning it into action, or crisis is making you reflect on what you want in your life and whether your job is aligned with that vision. Either way, I think it’s fine, because it shows that you are getting closer to the kind of life you want to live. But it doesn’t hurt for people who want to quit or are planning to quit, to pause a bit to think about, “Do I want to quit because other people are quitting? And is the grass really greener on the other side?” It’s also important for organizations to start thinking about how to retain people during crisis, or restaff quickly when crisis is over. It might be easy to just see people go during crisis, as organizations have to cut costs, many of them have to cut costs anyway, so organizations might see it as great: we don’t have to let people go, instead, they are leaving themselves. But not having enough people to fulfill the recovering workload after the crisis is over can put companies in a disadvantaged position. So for the organizations, it’s actually not too late to start thinking about how you may try to retain your people during crisis, or restaff quickly after the crisis is over. So this is my take on this issue.

 

Claire Harbour

Indeed, I would go further and say, organizations should be reflecting not only on how to retain people during the crisis, but how to retain people period. Because it’s definitely obvious that too many people are let go for the wrong reasons, and not nurtured enough and nourished enough in their careers to find them meaningful.

Let’s use that as a means to dive further into the question of meaning in work and all its implications. For many people, doing work that they love is essential, it leads to them doing great work. However, there are definitely mixed views about this. Many employees who love their work do tend to spend more time and effort at work. Studies have found that they can often be more idealistic than effective, and critical of organizational practices in ways that don’t lead to success. Yet, there’s also some evidence that these calling-oriented employees tend to achieve higher pay and organizational status, the main reason being managers’ perception that these workers perform better and are more committed to the organization than those who are job- or pay-oriented. Can you help us to try to reconcile these apparently contradictory ideas? The big question for us in the end is do calling-oriented employees enjoy more tangible career outcomes than others?

 

Winnie Jiang

Sure. So, in my research with my co-author Yuna Cho from the University of Hong Kong, we indeed found evidence that calling-oriented employees enjoy more tangible career benefits, such as higher income and greater chance of getting promotion than other people, especially the job-oriented employees who do their work primarily to make money. And when looking at this finding, most people would think that this is because calling-oriented employees who do their work primarily to gain personal fulfillment or make a societal contribution, as you suggested, they love what they do for some kind of bigger reasons that’s not just about making money. So most people would believe that this finding that we have is because these calling-oriented employees indeed deliver better job performance and probably show stronger commitment to the organization, so they deserve to be be rewarded in a better way objectively than others. But in our study, we found that even when there is no difference in your objective job performance, or there is no indication that they have stronger commitment to their organization, managers still see calling-oriented employees as performing better and more committed to their organization than job-oriented employees. So this suggests that there is a bias that managers have towards people who simply show a love for their work. And the positive relationship between having a calling orientation and tangible career rewards exists because there is this direct link between loving what you do, and being better at what you do that is rooted in most of our minds in our brains, especially the managers’ brains out there. But this direct link does not necessarily exist in reality. So there are many people who do not have the luxury to do what they love or work in their calling, but they are hardworking, responsible employees who deliver great job performance, and are equally if not more committed to their employer. So these people also deserve a fair treatment in the workforce. And our findings suggest that managers should just be aware of this bias they show towards calling-oriented employees, because favoring them could pressure everyone in the organization to feel that they have to show love for their work. But many people do not necessarily have that love, but they’re still very good performers. And that’s not necessarily useful or helpful for the organization, because you can risk isolating the people who do not necessarily feel that sense of love, but they’re still very good workers. And organizations could also force employees to present a fake sense of love if employees observe that the people who love their job are being rewarded more, and you don’t want to create that culture where people feel that they have to fake a sense of love for their work in front of their managers.

 

Claire Harbour

Yeah, a world without fake love would be good, though I guess there’s the argument “fake it till you make it” as well. And it’d be interesting to see how that might work out long term, and whether that would transform things.

 

Winnie Jiang

Yeah, yes. On the other side, as you mentioned, “fake it until you like it.” I do know that many employees, because we have this popular discourse over “you have to love what you do, you have to find purpose in what you do,” many people feel the pressure to find purpose in their work and love their work. But I guess what we want to say is, work doesn’t have to be the only source of purpose or meaning in one’s life. A lot of people find more meaning and purpose outside of the domain of work, such as in families, or in volunteering, community services, and that’s perfectly fine. So it’s important for people to know that it’s not necessary that they have to love what they do to be great at what they do.

 

Claire Harbour

Yeah, I think that’s a really important distinction, this idea that the meaning must always be attached to the work can be quite dangerous. I work with a lot of powerful women who have been very successful in their careers and now want to do something to give back. And they generally show up thinking that they have to be doing the thing to give back. So maybe a woman who was an incredibly successful chief marketing officer in a large company, now wants to go off and build a school brick by brick in Africa. And if that’s truly what she wants, then that’s great. But it’s often the meaning associated with building the school that’s important. And often, what I find is that these women go back to the idea that perhaps it’s better to be continuing to do the work that maybe they didn’t find quite so fulfilling anymore, and use the proceeds from that, the money from that, to put into somebody else building the school. So exactly where we locate the meaning is a fascinating subject, because there’s a huge locus in which in which it could be placed. That’s absolutely fascinating that you’re seeing that in this way, too.

Let’s go on and talk a little bit about the place where our work overlaps so much. Along with my co-author Antoine, we focus our practice and research on big, messy career transitions, and we know that more and more people are redirecting their careers, whether that’s by choice or by necessity. And we know that this is a topic you’ve looked into as well. In one of your works, you and your co-author, Amy—and I’m going to try to pronounce this—Wrzesniewski, or something like that—suggest that in an occupation where jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, journalists followed either a preservation, akin to recreating, or reinvention, akin to repurposing, path as they move forward with their careers. Could you share a bit more about this work, and what insights or practical advice might be applicable more broadly, to others beyond journalism?

 

Winnie Jiang

Sure. So we all know that any career transition is difficult, right? Well, it may be less difficult for those who do not find their current career quite meaningful and want to make the transition. It can be particularly challenging for those who have been very satisfied with their career but are in one way or another, compelled to make a transition for reasons they cannot control. Then how do people in the second category make career transitions? What factors can help or hinder their transition? So it is with these questions that Amy Wrzesniewski and I decided to look into the experience of journalists. And journalism as an occupation, the industry has been undergoing severe destabilization as many of us know in the past two decades, which forced many journalists to change their careers. And journalists also tend to view their profession as highly meaningful, right? They go into this profession they have invested a lot of time, years, education in this profession, they see as a way to make a big impact in other people’s lives and in the society. So it makes it particularly hard for them to imagine what other work they could possibly do, when journalism as a whole industry is undergoing this destabilization, and they’re forced to think about what other work they could possibly do. But we found that some journalists had a relatively easier time making such transitions. These journalists tend to hold what we call a “flexible meaning perception.” That is, they believe that different meanings they perceive from working in journalism, such as doing tasks they like, like writing, interviewing people, and bettering other people’s lives, especially people from more disadvantaged backgrounds, these meanings they think can be transferable to another profession. Such beliefs that meanings do not have to change as their occupations change, make them more willing and able to change into a different occupation and reinvent their career in a different occupation. So they are more receptive to the idea of change, because they know they can still obtain the same sense of meaning from a different occupation. In contrast, other journalists do not see these meanings as transferable at all. So they hold what we call a “fixed meaning perception.” They believe that it is only in journalism that they can see these meanings to be realized, and they won’t be able to find the same kind of meaning any other occupation. So for them, it just appears impossible to change into another line of work or another line of profession, and they tend to preserve their career in journalism by being freelancers. We believe this finding offers practical advice for anyone contemplating a career transition, not just journalists who are thinking about making career transitions. Specifically, it helps to reflect on whether we perceive the meaning of our current work as fixed only in this work or industry or occupation, or as flexibly transferable to other types of work. Seeing that the meanings we cherish so much in one work, can survive and even thrive in a different line of work, can really help to ease the career transition process, especially if we are forced to leave our previous work involuntarily.

 

Claire Harbour

Excellent. That’s really very interesting indeed, and something that we’ve definitely anecdotally observed, but interesting to bring it all together in one specific study. Let’s turn the tables now and look at organizations. Let’s think about how organizations tend to manage talent and careers. We’re seeing a renewed interest by organizations to review, upgrade or transform their own approach to talent mobility. But what’s your perspective on this topic, and how far can organizations and employees go to increase moves and portability of talent? And do you have any particularly good examples of innovative or best practice that you might be able to share now?

Winnie Jiang

It’s indeed an important question, as people are moving across organizations more and more in the course of their career. In my research with Gina Dokko from the University of California, Davis, we suggest that organizations should update their talent management system to take into account the fact that, like I said, talents are increasingly more mobile nowadays and tend to stay with the same employer for usually fewer than five years, or even shorter than that. So organizations should think about how to utilize and maximize the contributions these talents can make to the organizations as soon as they are here and as well as after they leave, right? Because they are only going to be here for a quite short amount of time and they’re going to leave pretty soon, then the organizations should just start thinking about “how could we maximize their contributions to us during the limited time they’re here?” And research has shown that star performers in their previous organization—they perform super well, so they were deemed as star performers in the in a different organization—and usually a new organization, when they see it, they will try to recruit the star performers over by paying them a lot of money. But research has shown that star performers, after they move to a new organization, they will experience a significant performance drop. They will no longer be a star after the move. This is because the context that they are working in has changed, and they need time to adapt. And the context they were working in before contributed to their performance, but the context they are working right now might not be as conducive to their performance. So organizations should think about how to facilitate the adaptation for these star performers by socializing them with the people they will be working with, with the place they will be working in as early as possible. It could even start before these people actually came into the organization. As soon as you wanted to recruit this person, you should probably start thinking about how to help this person adapt to the new environment they will be working in and the people they will be working with. So they may think about putting some time and efforts to understand the star performers’ previous working environments and think about how to replicate that as much as possible in the new work environment, or ask the performers about the frictions or differences they are encountering in the new organizations and help them to reduce or remove the frictions as much as possible.

And when these star performers, or what we often call the talents, leave, organizations should maintain connections with them rather than just stop the connections with them right away. They should do so, for example, by creating a community akin to organizational alumni network. And these connections have been found to be beneficial to organizations as they can help transport information from the talents’ new employers, which their previous organizations can actually learn from. So they can be conduits of very helpful knowledge, information that organizations can get from other organizations that their previous employees are working for right now. And these connections also help to potentially at some point for organizations to rehire these talents back, and we’ll call these “boomerang employees.” And research shown that boomerang employees can make a great contributions to the organization because they’re already familiar with all the structure, the system, the people that’s in the organization, so they adapt faster and they can bring additional creativity innovations as they also worked in other organizations before and have a good sense of a contrast of what this organization is doing. So I think by maintaining connections with the talents who are leaving or have left will be beneficial for the organization.

Claire Harbour

For sure, for sure. Let’s look at a different kind of connection and contact now. You’ve got an INSEAD colleague, Jen Petriglieri, whom we’ve had on this podcast and who focuses on understanding how couples work, how they optimize their career and life fulfillment in harmony. And you’ve done some work investigating how couples view the meaning of their own work differently. How do you perceive that couples might best succeed in making satisfying job transitions?

Winnie Jiang

Yeah. My research finds that when couples view the meaning of their own work differently, it can actually slow down their job transition process. Take two couples as examples here. In the first couple, one person sees his or her work as a calling. As we talked about earlier, seeing your work as a calling means you see work as a source of personal fulfillment and a way to make a societal contribution. And the other person in the couple sees his or her work as a job, that is, work’s primary function is to make money. And in a second couple, both partners in the couple see their work either as a calling or as a job, but their perceptions are matched, so they see their work in the same way. What we found is that compared to the second couple whose perceptions about the meaning of their work match or align, the partner who is unemployed in the first couple, who the two persons in the couple has a misaligned meaning of work, they’re about fifty-five percent less likely to find re-employment six months later. So there is some cost associated with having misaligned meaning of work within a couple. And this is because we also find that when the couple’s perceived meaning of their work are misaligned, the partner will start paying attention to certain aspects of work that they initially overlooked or did not really care about. So when they’re looking for jobs, they are looking for these additional attributes, too that they initially didn’t care. Of course, that will slow them down. So they’re looking for work that both they like and that they think will be considered a good job by their partner. So it’s like looking for a job that both partners would like. And again, it’s not surprising that by including additional attributes, criteria, and also thinking about whether my partner would like this job, it will slow down the job transition process. It will just prolong their job searching process. For the person making a job transition, it will make the transition actually easier if their partner helps to focus the unemployed partner or job searching partner’s attention on finding jobs based on his or her own view of the meaning of work, and minimize the influence of the partner. So for couples who are making job transitions, they should focus on helping each other stay focused on what each person him or herself wants from a job, rather than making them easily subject to be influenced by other people around them, not just their partner, but also their parents, friends. So I think a very important role that partners can take in helping their significant others make a career transition is to help them stay focused on what they themselves really want. And that’s the best thing a partner can do in this critical period of anyone’s life.

Claire Harbour

Beautiful. Now, I feel we could carry on talking about so many subjects for much longer, but we need to stop. So just before we close, is there anything else you’d like to share with us? Anything exciting that you’re going to be working on in 2022 or beyond? Beyond the obvious answer that you’ll be working on looking after a new baby. But is there anything else you’d like for our audience to know before we before we put an end to this?

Winnie Jiang

Sure. Yeah, I was about to say actually the biggest new project for me in 2022 is this personal one, which is for me to transition to being the mom of a boy who is estimated to arrive in about three or four weeks. And the journey of pregnancy, especially now toward the end of it, has actually made me think a lot about questions on the meaning of work that I didn’t quite think about before. For example, before I became pregnant and start imagining having a child, all my focus was on work, right? I tend to focus less on personal life, my own body, and other people I loved being in my life. So I started thinking about questions such as how does the meaning of war change for people over time, especially when people experience significant changes in life in other domains, such as becoming parents? And this is a question that scholars in this domain have not yet thought about that extensively. We always assume that work is the most important part of anyone’s life these days, but I’ve also heard many people say that after they become parents, their focus has shifted. The meaning of work has changed. How does that change for different people? Seems a very interesting and important question for me to examine at some point in the future.

And I also mentioned the issue of body. So one downside of doing meaningful work is that people try to put everything into their work, sometimes including sacrificing their body and personal well-being, so that leads to exhaustion and undermined physical health. And now, as I’m going through pregnancy and I know fatigue is a symptom, exhaustion often happens, and and I think it happens to a lot of other people as well, when they are going through some maybe personal illness. And at this point will they continue to make themselves uncomfortable so that they continue to put them all of themselves in work? Or how do people balance the relationship between what the body needs and what the work needs, especially when they’re engaging in meaningful work? So these are additional questions that came up in the past few months for me that I would be very excited to to investigate at some point in the future after I become less busy with baby-caring duties. But I will be in the meantime thinking about it, and talking about these questions with other people to get some ideas, probably. And besides that, I will just continue to work on research projects that have started, but not yet finished. And we talk about the great resignation before and the impact of crisis on whether people make changes in their career. Actually, right now, in one project, I’m studying how societal-level crises such as financial crises and non-financial crises like natural disasters, affect people’s attitudes about their work differently. So I am looking forward to continuing to to dive into those questions and hopefully find an answer quickly to share with others.

Claire Harbour

Fantastic, Winnie. Well, we look forward also to the results of all these different experiments, most of all, your human experiment on yourself, on your beautiful sample of one.

Winnie Jiang

Thank you, yes.

Claire Harbour

So thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and I know the audience is going to love this. So we wish you the very best in the coming weeks, and we look forward to keeping up with your research and your ideas and your thinking and perhaps collaborating on a study at some point. Thank you so much, Winnie.

Winnie Jiang

Thank you! It’s been fun. Thank you.