What gives you a sense of meaning in your work?

To the OP, HR has an obligation to play a role (and a relatively important one, at that) in creating meaningful work, to the extent that it is simply good business sense to be sure that every job in an organization makes a meaningful contribution towards that company's success, however it chooses to measure success.

But creating meaningful work and "creating meaning for people in their work" are not the same thing. I believe that it is fundamentally down to the individual employee to find his or her own meaning in what they do. An enlightened and cash-rich employer might well put some time and investment into helping activities like mindfulness or coaching to help people learn the tools to find such meaning but the actual task of finding it isn't one that can be outsourced, to HR or anyone else!

On the topic of BS jobs, though, one of my first jobs was taking socks out of one box, changing the labels, and putting them back into another box. I was the sole employee of a subsidiary company within the company that owned the warehouse where I worked and, as a result, worked in an entirely different part of the warehouse from everyone else and never saw another person all day long. I found meaning in listening to Radio 4 for eight hours a day and in the benefits of cycling there and back every day. Not much meaning to be found in socks, to be fair.

Not much meaning to be found in socks, to be fair.

https://www.stand4socks.com/

The revolution has to start somewhere ;)

Not much meaning to be found in socks, to be fair.

https://www.stand4socks.com/

The revolution has to start somewhere ;)

The other issue for me is that the job may have purpose but how much 'stuff' does get in the way of people doing their best and enjoying work
We need to ask if we are part of the stuff or there to facilitate