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Becoming a Meaning Maker: Enhancing the Meaningfulness of Correctional Officers' Roles

Explore the challenges correctional officers face in finding meaningful work and discover strategies to enhance their job satisfaction and sense of purpose.

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Introduction 
A meaningful work position is described as one in which an individual feels a genuine connection between the work an individual does and the broader life purpose that surpasses self. Finding meaningful work is a desire for every person. However, not all occupations are significant, and people consider them the last alternative (Simmons, 2017,p.2). Correctional work (correctional officers) is one occupation that many people perceive as the last option and is usually taken in hopes of getting another job diminished. Working in the penitentiary setting is perceived by many as a devastating occupation that is barely respected in society. Moreover, most studies on correctional employment portray prison work as “dirty work” associated with stress, work-related problems, burnout, and dissatisfaction (Bezerra, Assis, & Constantino, 2016, p.2135). As a result, prison work is often held in low esteem, which lowers the meaning of the occupation. This paper will analyze the factors that contribute to the position’s meaninglessness and recommend making the role meaningful.
Factors that Make Correctional Officer’s Position Meaningless
According to Stein et al. (2018, p. 688), meaningful work describes specifically experienced work as significant. Thus, any job can be considered as more or less meaningful. Stein et al. further point out there are many sources of work meaningfulness, including developing personal authenticity, serving others, and expressing an individual’s full potential. Nonetheless, many factors limit work meaningfulness, including lack of control and the incapacity to find value in an individual’s work. As a result, work meaningfulness has become a topic of research interest in different occupations, but little research has been conducted among correctional officers. However, several studies identify the various factors that limit work meaningfulness among correctional officers. The following are some of the factors that lead to a lack of work meaningfulness among correctional officers.
Organizational Factors
The work environment of correctional officers is one of the barriers to work meaningfulness among the correctional officers. Correctional officers interact with millions of people subjected to jail term every year. These people vary from pretrial detainees waiting to be transferred to the prison or other facilities, including mental health or drug rehabilitation centers, convicts waiting to be sentenced for felonies and other crimes (Bezerra, Assis, & Constantino, 2016, p.2135). Incidences of suicide are also high among people jailed or imprisoned because the majority suffer from mental illnesses. The work environment of the correctional facilities, combined with possible inadequate funding and staff shortage, leads to low job satisfaction among the correctional officers. 
Organizational-related stress is another factor that hinders job meaningfulness among correctional officers. The organizational setting of the correctional facilities is a significant source of stress among the officers that makes people avoid getting into this occupation (Simmons, 2017, p.3). There are various organizational sources of stress in correctional facilities.
The stereotypical perceptions that the public holds about correctional officers’ jobs, the occupation is lowly esteemed, and therefore, few are attracted to these positions. Additionally, other factors such as unattractive salaries and high turnover result in understaffing in the correctional facilities (Simmons, 2017, p.4). Understaffing results in different forms of stress, such as having inadequate time to complete the assigned tasks, including headcounts, paperwork, and searches in a diligent way. Occasionally, the correctional officers are forced to work very fast while also addressing the unexpected inmates' needs and requests. In some cases, inmate violence may arise, and the correctional officers may not control them. Due to the nature of work, many prison officers lack ample time to interact with their families. 
Working overtime is another source of organizational stress among correctional officers. Due to staff shortages, the few available officers are forced to work overtime to accomplish all the assignments available in the workplace. Research by Finn (2000, p.12) about 100 correctional officers revealed that they decline taking calls because they predict that the institution might call for overtime. Others have a second phone number that is not known to the department. Some facilities permit just one refusal for overtime per year; a second one leads to a warning, the third one for a few days suspension, and the fourth refusal results in a permanent termination (Finn, 2000, p.12). Although employees earn extra income working overtime, frequent overtime work may result in burnout, and sometimes their contribution may not be recognized, hindering work meaningfulness. 
Rotating shiftwork is another source of organizational stress that hinders work meaningfulness among correctional officers. According to Finn (2000, p.12), correctional officers reveal that rotating shifts affect their family life and reduce their capability to perform their duties diligently due to fatigue and irritability. Additionally, supervisor demands can be a source of organizational stress among correctional officers. According to Finn's (2000, p.14) research, supervisors in correctional facilities often pressure junior officers to perform their jobs right. Yet, they cannot because of the shortage of staff. Therefore, feeling that individuals have not performed their jobs diligently to get the desired impact may hinder correctional officers from experiencing work meaningfulness. 
Work-Related Factors
Specific work conditions make the correctional officers’ work less meaningful as it affects the effectiveness of their work. The threat of inmate violence against correctional officers is an issue of concern. According to a study by Bezerra, Assis, & Constantino (2016, p.2138), the interviewed correctional officer revealed that the threat of attack from convicts is a significant source of stress among correctional officers. Moreover, violence among the convicts, including assaults, riots, murder, and suicides, is a substantial source of work-related stress that has short-term and long-term impacts on the officers. Critical occurrences in the workplace can intensify anxiety among the employees due to possible blames, job insecurity, recrimination, and scapegoating (Bezerra, Assis, & Constantino, 2016, p.2138). Such factors affect the meaningfulness of work among correctional officers. 
Convicts’ demands and manipulations is another workplace challenge for correctional officer and may hinder them from developing their authenticity and expressing their full potential. Correctional officers are exposed to frequent demands and endeavors for manipulation from the prisoners, which can be a source of stress in the workplace. For instance, some inmates may frequently request cigarettes or extra food while threatening to cause trouble if their demands are not met (Simmons, 2017, p.4). Moreover, the officer may be highly stressed when the convicts successfully manipulate them.  
All these are factors that act as barriers to work meaningfulness among the correctional officers. The stressful working conditions affect individual performance and prevent them from expressing their potential, thus lowering their possibility of experiencing meaningful work. Additionally, despite working for long hours and handling more tasks than they should, their sacrifice is rarely recognized. Grant (2008, p. 109) argues that when employees perceive their roles have high task significance, they experience more meaningful work. Having a sense of meaningfulness promotes job performance and motivates them to invest more time in completing their tasks. Employees desire to have an experience of their actions in relation and connection to other people. The significance of a job offers such a connection by showing that their efforts impact the wellbeing of other people. Once the employees are aware of the relationship between their actions and the welfare of other people, their perception of the significance of their tasks is enhanced (Grant, 2008, p.109). The stressful working conditions prevent the correctional officers from experiencing the relational connection between their jobs and the wellbeing of other people, thus limiting their experience for meaningfulness in their role. 
Recommendations to Make Correctional Officer Role Meaningful
Despite the factors that contribute to meaninglessness in the correctional officer role, I believe several recommendations can help correctional officers experience more meaningfulness in their role. Datification of the worker performance and productivity is one way of promoting work meaningfulness in the penitentiary officer occupation. Newell and Marabelli (2015), as cited in Stein et al. (2018), define datification as the process of codifying and converting an activity and even or a characteristic into data. The data collected enable the organization to evaluate the performance and productivity of individual employees. Assessing employees’ performance can help in recognizing the contributions made by respective correctional officers. Revealing the performance data to employees can help them realize that they contribute meaningfully to the inmates and the correctional facilities. This will help in creating self-efficacy among the correctional officers. Self-efficacy is the rationale that enables individuals to inform others about themselves and why their work has positive worth (Stein et al. 2018, p.689). 
Creating a community of correctional officers in the correctional facilities is another recommendation that would help in making the occupation more meaningful. According to Hansen and Keltner (2013), people desire to be in places to develop friendships and experience a sense of community. Being part of a community is a significant driver of happiness and engagement. Strong connections and a shared sense of purpose among the workers help foster a sense of community in the workplace. It helps one feel accepted within a community of people whose members identify with one another and have shared values and genuine care. 
This will be essential in promoting work meaningfulness among the correctional officers.
In conclusion, work meaningfulness is an important area of research. Employee performance and satisfaction are influenced by how they perceive their work to be meaningful. The experience of serving other people, developing personal authenticity, and expressing one’s full potential are some of the factors that contribute towards work meaningfulness. Also, experiencing the connection between work and the wellbeing of other people is another factor that promotes work meaningfulness among people. However, if employees do not experience those experiences, they will perceive their jobs as less meaningful. Correctional officers’ occupation is among the professions associated with less meaning. As a result, the work is lowly esteemed, and many people do not consider pursuing a career in this path, and many take it after failed attempts to secure other jobs. The meaninglessness associated with this job has resulted in a shortage of workers in the correctional facilities, which has resulted in poor working conditions. The paper has recommended ratification of employee performance and contributions and creating a community of correctional officers as approaches that can help in fostering meaningfulness in this role. 
 
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References
Bezerra, C. D. M., Assis, S. G. D., & Constantino, P. (2016). Psychological distress and work stress in correctional officers: a literature review. Ciencia & saude coletiva, 21, 2135-2146.
Finn, P. 2000.  Addressing correctional officer stress: Programs and strategies. National Institute of Justice. p. 1-27. 
Grant, A. 2008. The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relationship mechanisms, and boundary conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology.  Vol. 93, No.1, 108-124. DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.108
Hansen, M. & Keltner, D. 2013. Eight ways to find more meaning at work. 
Simmons, R. 2017. Predictors of job satisfaction among county jail correctional officers. Walden University. p.1-95. Available at: <a href="https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5358&context=dissertations">https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5358&context=dissertations</a>
Stein, M, Wagner, E., Tierney, P., Newell, S., & Galliers, R. 2019. Datification and the pursuit of meaningfulness in work. Journal of Management Studies. 56:3,  685- 692. doi: 10.1111/joms.12409
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Becoming a Meaning Maker: Enhancing the Meaningfulness of Correctional Officers' Roles

Explore the challenges correctional officers face in finding meaningful work and discover strategies to enhance their job satisfaction and sense of purpose.

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