Articles written by guest contributors
9 ways to demotivate employees
Monroe Porter
In fact, if you are busting your butt lifting blocks or digging a ditch, someone saying this kind of trite stuff is more likely to make you angry than encourage you. Rather than focus on fluffy quotes, let’s talk about some of the things bosses do that demotivate, so that you can avoid being part of the problem.
- Avoid the collective “We will take care of it.” Years ago, one of my first bosses was famous for telling people “We will take care of it” when he rarely helped with anything and mostly played golf. “We will take care of it” was code for, I am going to play golf and my staff will work themselves to death to do this because I told them to.
He took credit for being part of the team and never played a single down. Be careful of talking about we if you are not going to pitch in yourself. Give credit where credit is due. Simply say, the bookkeeper (or whatever is appropriate) will look into this and take care of it for you.” - Try to minimize busy work. Good employees have a strong sense of purpose. Making people do busy work destroys that purpose. Forcing people to dig something by hand rather than excavating can be demoralizing. The trick is to explain to people why it has to be dug by hand. People are not stupid and if you make them do stupid things without an explanation, they become disenchanted.
- Don’t play seagull. Seagulls show up on the job, squawk, dump on people and leave. Visit jobs but do so because people are making you money and you appreciate their efforts. Workers care about your money if you care about your money. If they never see you on the job, they assume they are doing great and there is plenty of money to go around. Point out what’s right as well as what is wrong.
- Avoid comparisons. Never compare yourself to your workers or compare other workers to one another. It creates an unhealthy environment. Strong people will perform. Weaker people need to become more self-confident and be supported. It would be fun to play golf with Tiger Woods or basketball with Michael Jordan but comparing my game to theirs would be very demotivating.
- Give performance feedback. Contractors are notorious for not providing career and growth goals for employees. Few have an official HR department and many are too busy working to take the time to communicate. I recently spoke to a contractor who had just lost a long-term employee who will be sorely missed. I asked the contractor why he left.
The contractor said that the disgruntled employee complained he never had a review or feedback on how he was doing. I asked, when was the last time he spoke with the employee about performance and he couldn’t remember. People like to know how they are doing and that what they are doing matters. Be careful of taking good employees for granted. - Don’t ignore underperforming family and friends. An employee’s job is his or her livelihood. If you have favorites or family members who are under performing, good employees will ultimately leave. They understand that blood is thicker than water and don’t want to place their job in jeopardy. Remember, employees have family and your job feeds that family. Just because you see your business as a family dynasty does not mean they have the same long-term vision.
- Don’t preach or lecture at people. Communication is a 2-way street. Rather than lecture people, ask questions. This is particularly important when addressing attitude or behavioral problems. Employees already know what time they need to come to work. Lecturing them does not work. Instead make it clear they will lose their job if they are continue to be late, and discuss what they might do to ensure they will be on time in the future.
- Avoid pay injustice. Too many contractors pay based on seniority with tenured employees possibly being overpaid and high performing new comers not getting paid in proportion to what they are contributing. If you have rapidly advancing employees, make sure you are compensating them based on performance, not length of time with the company.
- Ensure good one-on-one communication. Employees work for their direct report. Make sure your supervisors are communicating with their employees. Many foremen are not very good at this. To each employee, the person above them is the company. If you have supervisors who are not good communicators, somehow you must over compensate for this.
Monroe Porter is president of PROOF Management Consultants, a company specializing in seminars, and business consulting for contractors. He is also founder of PROSULT™ Networking Groups developed to help noncompeting contractors. Call (804) 267-1688, email Monroe@Proofman.com or visit Proofman.com
