The Surprising Reason Your Employees Aren't Motivated (It's Not What You Think)

Do you remember the last time you woke up and thought  "I can't wait to go to work today and do the very minimum required of me to not get fired"?
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​Me neither. 
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Which is interesting when you consider there's so much talk about how hard it is to get motivated staff these days.. Is that really true?

As a business owner knowing how to motivate and get the most out of others is a skill you have to develop if you want to scale past owner dependency to build something  that can scale and sell.

In this post I want to show why most of the common beliefs around employee motivation are wrong and how you can stand out from the crowd to nurture a highly motivated team that love growing your business for you... in any industry.

Let's start with a paradigm shift.

Businesses don't not perform because employees aren't motivated.

Employees aren't motivated because businesses don't perform.

Read that twice because it changes everything about how you approach employee motivation and even business.

Humans are hardwired to want to belong to a tribe, share goals, contribute and do a good job. It's literally hardwired into our evolution and proven by psychology.

So it makes zero sense to suggest that there are masses of employees who can't be bothered and it's the epic uphill battle of business owners and leaders to motivate them.

Sure there are plenty of spoilt people who have had it too easy and don't have much desire to work... but they are a small minority. 

In the last 5 years of working with hundreds of employees across businesses of all shapes and sizes very rarely has a lack of commitment or motivation been the issue holding the team or business back.

So what's the real issue?

Outdated people and business systems that are no longer fit for purpose. Most businesses, big and small are still running on leadership, management and business systems designed during the industrial revolution. 

These systems were effective during a time when most jobs were non creative, non service based repetitive manual labour. All that was required during this time was a top down system that ensured the people in the factory knew how to do repetitive tasks and were keeping up with targets.

Todays business world is different. Today businesses are increasingly service based. Today businesses need to be agile... and human psychology is on your side... if you implement systems that enable it.

I'll tell you now, hands down, what the most common reason for employee frustration and low motivation is. 

The inability of the employee to be able to influence positive change in the business.

Read that twice as well because it's important.

The most common reason for employees being de-motivated is their frustration that they can't make things better.

Not because they don't have the skill or insight... but because no one is making the time to listen to them.

Imagine a guy in a lawn care company. The company uses garden sheers to cut lawns. The guy has seen this new thing called a lawn mower. It's a genius device that gets pushed around a lawn and cuts all of the grass to the perfect height and it does it at least 50x faster than with sheers. 

He goes to tell his manager or boss about this new contraption and how it could revolutionise their business but theirs no system for upward feedback. Whenever he tries to get some time with them their either too busy or they listen but don't really process what he says.

Imagine how he feels going to work every day, cutting the grass with sheers knowing he could be doing it faster, better and making more money for the business is someone would just listen to him.

It's an inflated example but this is business as normal in most businesses, big and small.

Employees know how to make businesses better and they're motivated to help implement those changes until they learn that nobody wants to listen to them.

Nobody likes not being heard and nobody likes being in a stagnant culture. 

Your employees want your business to win, and they want to feel the sense of pride that comes from knowing that they played a key role in making it win.

I repeat again.

Businesses don't not perform because employees aren't motivated.

Employees aren't motivated because business don't perform.

And businesses don't perform because they're running on old systems that don't let employees be heard, encourage creativity and enable agility.

You don't need to fix employee motivation issues. You need to fix your systems.

I pulled together a short video showing you the three simple, easy to implement systems that will make this a reality in your business.

You can watch it below or, if you'd like us to implement these systems for you in your business, book a discovery call with my team here.