In today’s workforce, it seems it wouldn’t be that hard to stand out from the average employee. This especially tends to be true in “lower level” jobs such as fast food or local retailers. Rarely do you find an exceptional worker in these fields. How, as a manager, do you explain this? Why won’t people work hard?

The short answer:

The answer is in the title. By labeling jobs with “lower level,” you’re going to get two kinds of people working in these roles.

  1. People with a legitimate lack of skills and comprehension to do a good job.
  2. Talented people that know they are capable of working a higher level job.

The first group is self-explanatory. Sometimes there are people who learn at a different level. Not even a bad thing, just maybe reveals their focus or talent is not in a job like this.

However, I believe the second group is the more common person you see. People believe (know) they are capable of working a much better job and because of this, they feel compelled to show how little effort they need to put in to meet the requirements of their current job.

This may seem completely backwards, but I truly believe this is the mindset behind a lot of people, especially late teens early twenties, in the workforce.

The need to complain

I’ve talked about this in an earlier blog post, but the main gist of it is that for some odd reason, people feel like it’s the end of the world if people find out they enjoy their job. Once again, this seems completely backwards, but many people just want others to see how hard their life is and what better way to do this than by making your job seem horrible?

Bad training

That’s right, some of the blame has to go back on the managers and company. When you see places like Chick-fil-a, which prides itself on how friendly and hardworking their employees are, you know that has to be something involved with the training. Also, if you start training people correctly, eventually your work will start creating a “passive income” of sorts. The competitive nature of the people you hire will eventually kick in and each one will try to do better than the other. If healthy and friendly competition, this can be a HUGE benefit to the company. Which leads me to my last point:

No incentives

I worked at a waterpark and pool in the town I grew up in and one of the most frustrating parts of my job was that no matter how hard you worked, if you came back the next year, you would get a 25 cent raise, just like everyone else…

I busted my butt doing extra work and helping pick up the property, and then there were people who would consistently miss shifts or do a poor job in their cleaning duties. In the eyes of the pool, there was no difference between us at the end of the year.

It doesn’t even have to be a monetary incentive, but just give people a reason to work hard. Literally, this could just be verbally praising someone when they do something really well. Just do something. Also, by introducing a little competition, you’ll be able to see who is willing to work at that “higher level” kind of job.

Stop asking why won’t they and start asking why would they

As a manager, if you take these questions back on yourself and ask “why would they” instead of “why wouldn’t they,” it forces you to understand the specific person you’re dealing with. If you know more about them, you’ll better be able to understand what might incentivize them to work a little harder in the tasks you’ve given them.

Believe it or not, most people are willing to work hard, they just have to understand and believe in why they’re working hard before they do.