Lazy, Unmotivated Employees
“My employees are lazy and unmotivated.”
“What makes you continue to employ lazy and unmotivated people?”
“It’s impossible to find good people. People just don’t care these days.”
“What could you do differently to find the right people?”
“I’ve tried everything, no matter who I hire it’s always the same.”
“Is it possible that you have good people, and your environment is part of the problem?”
“I’m sure it’s not me or our work environment, I just have lazy unmotivated employees.”
“What makes you continue to employ lazy and unmotivated people?”
Repeat.
I have some version of this conversation about once a month and it’s incredibly frustrating. In the moment I often find myself so put-off that it's hard for me to articulate what I believe, so here it is.
If you have a business that requires employees and there are actually no people who want to participate in what you’ve created, you don’t have a viable business model.
You may very well have some employees that aren’t right for you, but operating on the presupposition that it’s impossible to find good people is not likely to help you find the right people or help the right people find you.
Most of our jobs are routine. We come in and do some approximation of the exact same thing we did yesterday. This doesn’t mean we can’t create a culture where our team is engaged and takes pride in what they’re helping to create on this perpetual groundhog day. (The parable of the three bricklayers comes to mind.)
Inspiring people and connecting their work to a bigger cause is as much a part of the job as hiring and paying rent.
As business owners, a defeatist attitude gives us a cop-out. If our troubles are beyond our control we still get to see ourselves as the good boss in an impossible system. A victim to some ethereal cause that’s completely outside of our control. It erases the possibility for us to create meaningful experiences for our employees, our guests, and ourselves.
Taking ownership puts us in the position to change the outcome, we just have to acknowledge that instead of only focusing on what’s wrong with our employees, we might need to look at ourselves first.