Employee engagement is declining, AI is reshaping roles, and many people are quietly asking themselves a confronting question on Sunday night:

Why am I doing this work at all?

In this episode of The Ikigai Podcast, I speak with Olesia Kyrylchuk, Senior Director and Head of People for Asia East and Pacific at EPAM Systems, about what may be missing from conventional approaches to workplace engagement and well-being.

Our conversation explores how the Japanese concepts of ikigai and ibasho can help organisations create workplaces in which people find meaning in what they do and feel that they genuinely belong.

“If the company is focused only on achieving results, but does not balance that with explaining how those results add to the fulfillment of each individual, the company will be in a constant fight for engagement.”

Rebuilding a Life and a Sense of Belonging

Olesia’s interest in these ideas is grounded in personal experience.

After the war in Ukraine forced her to relocate to Japan, she found herself rebuilding not only her life but also her sense of community and belonging. This meant creating new relationships and finding new places where she could feel safe, accepted and connected.

In Japanese, the word ibasho literally means “a place to be,” but it can also describe a place where we feel at home, where we belong and where we can be ourselves.

For Olesia, creating a new ibasho in Japan was not simply a lifestyle choice. It was a psychological and emotional necessity. As she described it, she carried her home in her heart while slowly creating new places of belonging through her work, friendships and community.

One of these places is a Ukrainian playback theatre group in Tokyo.

Playback theatre is a form of improvisational theatre in which audience members share personal experiences and the performers immediately “play back” those stories on stage. Through this process, people have the experience of being heard, recognised and understood.

The group offers Ukrainian woman living in tokyo an opportunity to share their stories, preserve their cultural identity and form meaningful bonds with others who understand what they have experienced.

It is a powerful example of ibasho being intentionally created.

Why Stories Matter

Stories help us make sense of our experiences. They also allow us to understand the experiences of others.

When someone shares a personal story and sees it reflected back to them, they often recognise emotions, values and meanings they had not previously been able to articulate. They are reminded that their experiences matter and that they are not alone.

These are not soft extras. Recognition, connection and belonging are fundamental human needs.

They also follow us into the workplace.

Employees do not leave their need for meaning at the office door. Nor do they stop needing recognition, relationships or opportunities to contribute simply because they are being paid.

This raises an important question for organisations:

Is the workplace somewhere employees merely perform tasks, or can it become an ibasho where they feel valued, connected and able to contribute as themselves?

The Difference Between Satisfaction and Engagement

Job satisfaction and employee engagement are often treated as if they are the same thing, but there is an important difference.

An employee may be satisfied with their salary, working conditions and benefits without feeling emotionally invested in their work. Satisfaction may keep someone in a job, but it does not necessarily inspire them to contribute their energy, ideas or initiative.

Engagement involves a deeper psychological connection to one’s work, team and organisation.

However, even engagement may not go far enough if the work feels meaningless.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, only 20% of employees globally are engaged at work. Sixty-four per cent are not engaged, while 16% are actively disengaged.

These figures suggest that organisations may be facing more than a motivation problem. They may be facing a meaning problem.

What Happens When Results Become Everything?

Organisations understandably need results. However, when results and productivity become the sole focus, the human experience of work can easily be overlooked.

Employees may meet their targets while gradually becoming exhausted, disconnected or indifferent. They may be productive in the short term but unable to see why their contribution matters.

A results-only culture can also weaken relationships. Colleagues become resources, managers become evaluators, and work becomes a series of transactions.

This is where ikigai offers another perspective.

Our work can be one source of ikigai when it allows us to express our values, make a worthwhile contribution, build meaningful relationships, grow through our efforts and experience a sense of accomplishment.

The goal is not to insist that every employee discover one grand purpose through their job. It is to create conditions in which work can contribute positively to a person’s sense that their life is worth living.

AI Is Intensifying the Meaning Question

The question of meaningful work is becoming even more urgent as artificial intelligence transforms workplaces.

AI can perform tasks that previously required years of experience and specialised knowledge. As organisations redesign roles and automate parts of people’s work, employees may begin to question the value of their skills and contributions.

If a task can be performed faster by AI, what is the employee’s role?

What remains uniquely human about their contribution?

How can they continue to feel useful, valued and needed?

These are not merely technical or operational questions. They are questions of identity, meaning and self-worth.

Organisations will need to do more than help employees acquire new skills. They will also need to help them recognise their evolving roles and understand how their distinctly human qualities contribute to the workplace.

A Three-Layer Approach to Workplace Well-Being

During our conversation, Olesia outlined a practical way to think about workplace well-being through three interconnected layers:

1. Meaning

Employees need to understand why their work matters, how it reflects their values and how their contribution connects to something beyond the completion of individual tasks.

2. Health

People need support for their physical, psychological and emotional health. This includes sustainable workloads, opportunities for recovery and access to appropriate well-being resources.

3. Environment

The workplace must provide the conditions in which people can function and relate well. This includes psychological safety, supportive leadership, healthy relationships and a genuine sense of belonging.

Many workplace well-being initiatives focus primarily on health. They may offer fitness challenges, mindfulness sessions or access to counselling. While these initiatives can be valuable, they cannot compensate for meaningless work or an unhealthy organisational environment.

Meaning, health and environment must support one another.

“The most important thing in creating well-being in the workplace is to work together, to work as partners — not to expect that the company will do something for the individual, but also not to expect that the individual will do it by themselves.”

Moving Beyond Engagement

This shared interest in meaning and belonging led Olesia and me to develop Beyond Engagement: Creating a Meaningful Workplace.

This executive program is designed for HR professionals, people leaders and managers who want to move beyond surface-level engagement initiatives and explore what makes work genuinely worth doing.

The program brings together positive psychology, workplace experience and culturally informed Japanese concepts, including:

• Ikigai: What makes life and work feel worth living
• Ibasho: A place where we feel that we belong and can be ourselves
• Rolefulness: The sense that our roles are meaningful and appreciated by others
• Kokorozashi: A ambitious meaningful aspiration or intention
• Hatarakigai: The worth, satisfaction and motivation we experience through working

Participants will explore practical ways to identify sources of meaning and belonging within their organisations. They will also develop tools for recognising gaps that may contribute to disengagement, role distress or burnout.

The intention is not to impose Japanese ideas on employees or to reduce these concepts to corporate buzzwords. It is to use them as culturally informed lenses through which leaders can better understand universal human needs.

What Leaders Can Begin Doing Now

Creating a meaningful workplace requires more than a one-off workshop. It involves ongoing attention to how people experience their roles, relationships and contributions.

Leaders can begin by asking:

• Do employees understand how their work contributes to something worthwhile?
• Can they express their values through their roles?
• Do they feel that their contribution is recognised?
• Do they have meaningful relationships at work?
• Do they feel psychologically safe enough to share ideas and concerns?
• Can they see opportunities for growth and a positive future within the organisation?
• Does the workplace feel like somewhere they belong?

These questions can lead to deeper conversations than a conventional engagement survey alone.

Leaders can also create opportunities for employees to tell stories about moments when their work felt particularly meaningful. These stories often reveal the relationships, values and experiences that statistics fail to capture.

Work Should Be a Source of Ikigai

Work occupies a significant part of our lives. It influences our identity, relationships, health and sense of self-worth.

It should therefore be more than a source of income or a set of targets to achieve.

“Work should be a source of Ikigai. It should be meaningful. It can be challenging, it can be hard, but it should be meaningful and rewarding.”

This does not mean that every day will be inspiring or that every task must feel deeply meaningful. It means creating a workplace where people can recognise the value of their contributions, experience supportive relationships and feel that there is a place for them.

When employees feel that their work matters and that they belong, engagement becomes a natural outcome rather than another metric organisations must chase.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of my conversation with Olesia Kyrylchuk about rebuilding belonging, the role of storytelling and how organisations can move beyond engagement towards meaningful work.

If you work in HR or people leadership and would like to learn more about visit our program page Beyond Engagement: Creating a Meaningful Workplace.