You are 40 years old, head of China investment banking for Merrill Lynch, the pride of your family and clearly destined for greatness. So, Wilson Feng, what do you say to the Bloomberg reporter who phones you up and asks for an interview?

"I want to change my life," Mr Feng said. "It's a nightmare. My father won't recognise me if I stay in investment banking."

Mr Feng is off to go and work for a state-owned Chinese company. "Salaries at state-owned enterprises are low compared with investment banking, but you can have a better life," he explained. Merrill Lynch is gutted. "It's sad to see him go. He was a model employee," said Damian Chunilal, head of Pacific Rim investment banking.

"Model employee" is probably nearer the truth than Merrill realises. For this is not simply another case of executive burn-out. Mr Feng is treading a path that, according to research published this week, is likely to get more and more crowded in the months to come.

Worthwhile Work, a report by the communications consultancy CHA, contains the results of a survey of more than 1,500 UK employees working for a range of organisations. It has uncovered deep dissatisfaction with the sort of work that is currently on offer.

About 40 per cent of younger workers (under 35) in private sector companies are considering a move into the public or charity sectors, the survey reveals. In all, one in three private sector workers is thinking about making such a move. More than 60 per cent of 18-25-year-olds, and almost half overall, are looking for what they call "more worthwhile work".

A phrase such as that will get some managers spluttering with indignation. What on earth do they mean by "worthwhile"? What do they expect? After all you have done for them: paid holiday, sick pay, weekends off, health and safety legislation, protection from discrimination of all kinds, with a salary and pension on top . . . and now they want to be inspired as well? They don't know they're born.

The role model for indignant managers is the film director Alfred Hitchcock. When asked by anxious movie stars what their "motivation" was in a scene, his answer was blunt. "Your salary," he would say.

Grown-up bosses can also be impatient with the more unrealistic expectations of their employees, especially those held by members of Generation Y - the feisty 20-somethings. There is a paradox here: even though younger colleagues are facing the prospect of working well into their 60s and perhaps beyond, many seem to be in a hurry for rapid advancement.

And younger colleagues in particular seem unpersuaded that dedicating themselves to wealth creation is an attractive or noble option. "You hear people saying that they are going to stick with their private sector job, before going off and doing 'something more worthwhile'," Colette Hill, chief executive of CHA, says.

The evidence points to leadership failure on a huge scale. Employees do not understand what is important or worthwhile about their work. They do not see why profitability matters. It is hardly surprising that research into employee engagement invariably throws up dismalfindings. Employees don't feel they are being offered anything that is worth engaging with.

Leadership gurus talk grandly about providing "a narrative" that people want to follow. More prosaically, it would make a nice change if managers simply told their staff what they wanted from them. The Gallup organisation's "Q12 employee satisfaction survey", a popular way of finding out what staff are thinking, opens with the statement: "I know what is expected of me at work", a phrase employees are asked either to agree or disagree with. That first statement often reveals, to business leaders' surprise, just how badly people are being managed.

Does corporate responsibility (CR) offer a new narrative that people want to hear? While the CHA survey confirms that CR matters to employees, it is not an end in itself. Good businesses are responsible. But they also have a purpose that people can believe in. Leaders have to do a better job of explaining why their employees should turn up for work in the morning.

There is a reason why sitcoms such as The Office and novels such as Joshua Ferris's bestseller of last year And Then We Came To The End have proved so popular. The portrayal of worthless rather than worthwhile work strikes a chord. Mr Ferris's deceptively flat narrator describes an average working day in these terms: "We spent most of our time inside long silent pauses as we bent over our individual desks, working on some task at hand." Inspiring? No, not really.

Stacking supermarket shelves so that families can find what they want to eat is worthwhile. As is paying cheques into the right bank account for customers. Managers have to show why these and other apparently banal tasks matter.

We don't have to go quite as far as the Chicago-based writer Studs Terkel, who said: "Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash . . . for a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying." But the business that succeeds in providing worthwhile work will leave competitors struggling in its wake.

假如你是Wilson Feng，今年40岁，身为美林中国投行业务负责人，是家族的骄傲，而且明显拥有远大的未来。那么，面对打电话要求采访的彭博社(Bloomberg)记者，你会说些什么呢？

"我想改变自己的生活，"Wilson Feng说道。"这是一场噩梦。如果我继续呆在投行，我父亲会认不出我的。"

Wilson Feng将去一家中国国企工作。他解释说："国企的收入比投行低，但生活会好一些。"美林损失惨重。该行环太平洋地区投行业务主管达米安•丘尼拉利(Damian Chunilal)表示："他的离去令人遗憾。他是一名模范员工。"

"模范员工"这个词可能比美林所意识到的更贴近现实。因为这不仅仅是另一个高管被累得精疲力竭的例子。本周发布的一项调查报告显示，未来几个月，Wilson Feng走上的这条道路可能会越来越拥挤。

公关顾问公司CHA的这份报告名为"有意义的工作"(Worthwhile Work)，涵盖了对英国各行各业1500多名员工的调查结果，揭示了人们对现有工作机会的严重不满。

报告显示，在私营企业中，大约40%的年轻员工（35岁以下）正在考虑转投公共部门或是慈善机构。在所有年龄段的私营企业员工中，有三分之一的人存在这种想法。超过60%的18岁到25岁员工，及近一半所有年龄段的员工，都正在寻找他们所谓的"更有意义的"工作。

这样一种说法会让一些经理感到义愤填膺。他们所说的"有意义"到底是什么意思？他们想要什么？你已经为他们做了那么多：带薪假期、病假工资、周末休息、健康与安全立法、各种反歧视法规，再加上薪水和退休金......现在他们还想得到精神鼓舞？他们简直不知道自己是谁了。

义愤填膺的管理者的榜样是电影导演阿尔弗雷德•希区柯克(Alfred Hitchcock)。当紧张的影星问他，他们拍电影的"动力"是什么时，他的回答非常直白："你的工资。"

成熟的老板也会对员工更多不切实际的期望感到不耐烦，尤其是对那些Y一代成员（朝气蓬勃、20来岁的年轻人）的期望。这里有一个自相矛盾的地方：虽然年轻同事可能会一直工作到60岁以后，但很多人似乎急于快速提升。

年轻同事似乎尤其不认可，把自己奉献给财富创造是一个诱人或崇高的理想。CHA首席执行官科莱特•希尔(Colette Hill)称："你会听到人们说，他们目前会继续为私营企业效力，今后则打算离开去做'更有意义的工作'。"

这项证据说明了领导的极度失职。雇员不知道本职工作的重要性或价值。他们不明白盈利能力为什么很重要。雇员忠诚度调查必然会产生糟糕的结果，我们对此不必感到惊诧。雇员并不觉得企业提供了任何值得自己忠诚的东西。

领导力大师们夸夸其谈地讲到，要提供一个人们愿意效仿的"故事"。更简单地说，如果经理们直接告诉员工，自己对他们的要求是什么，这将会是一个不错的变化。盖洛普(Gallup)的"员工满意度调查12问"(Q12 employee satisfaction survey)是一个探知员工想法的常用办法，它开篇第一句话是："我知道单位对自己工作的要求。"员工须要对此表示同意或不同意。令企业领导人吃惊的是，这第一句话常常揭示出对员工的管理是何其糟糕。

企业责任(corporate responsibility)是否提供了一个人们愿意倾听的新故事呢？虽然CHA的调查证实，雇员在乎企业责任，但它本身并不是目标。好企业是负责任的。但它们还有一个人们可以信赖的目标。领导人必须更好地解释，员工为何早上应该来上班。

情景喜剧《办公室》(The Office)及约书亚•菲里斯(Joshua Ferris)去年的畅销书《我们走到了尽头》(Then We Came to the End)之所以广受欢迎是有原因的。对那些没有意义的工作的描述让观众和读者产生了共鸣。菲里斯看似平直的叙述这样描写了一个平常的工作日："我们大部分时间都呆在一段一段长时间的沉默之中，伏案做着一些手头的任务。"鼓舞人心吗？好像不是吧。

把货物摆到超市货架上，让家庭可以找到自己想要的食物，这是一件有意义的工作。将顾客的支票打入正确的账户，也也是有意义的。管理者必须要说明，为什么这些及其它显然很平凡的工作很重要。

我们不必走到芝加哥作家斯特兹•特克尔(Studs Terkel)所说的那一步："工作不仅仅是为了糊口和挣钱，而是要日复一日地探索生活的意义，求得人们的认可，而不是从周一到周五像行尸走肉一样生活。"但如果一个企业可以成功地提供有意义的工作，它将把竞争者远远地甩在后面。
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