“How do you motivate your employees to work hard and do the job right, without being an ass?”

I came across a great management question on Reddit:

“How do you motivate your employees to work hard and do the job right without being an ass? I’m a lead cashier, and I have an employee that’s a great person, but she tends to cut corners and isn’t very thorough in some tasks. We have a checklist of tasks for the shift and I’ve said repeatedly hey we need to make sure we’re getting x, y, and z done every night, but it still isn’t happening. Upper management isn’t really addressing this either”

This is an excellent situation! Figuring out how to motivate people to do tasks they wouldn’t otherwise be caught-dead doing is a cornerstone of learning how to effectively manage and lead.

Here’s the first thing you need to admit to yourself: sometimes it’s ok for your employees to cut corners.

I know that seems like a blasphemous thing to say, but think about it: no one lives their entire life without taking a shortcut or two. Have you ever wore a shirt that probably should have been ironed first? Ever put off going to the dentist for one or two decades? Ever rinse a dish that probably could have used some soap? Cutting corners and making compromises on things that don’t seem that important is a normal part of life!

What makes cutting corners different in the workplace is the same thing that makes it different to cut corners when you live with someone. All of a sudden there are other people who have a strong opinion about where you cut corners!

So from the get go, you need to admit to yourself that your problem isn’t really that this employee is cutting corners, it’s where she’s cutting corners. She’s cutting corners on things that you think are important and wish she would care more about.

And there’s your problem. You can’t force someone to be motivated about something they don’t care about. In life, we cut corners on things that don’t seem particularly important. Your employees will always cut corners on perceived little things unless they know that those things are important enough to be done thoroughly.

“But Patrick, I told this employee to their face that it was SUPER important that they do x, y, and z the right way.”

Ok, but did you take the time to make sure that at the end of the conversation they believed it was important? If not, all you did was convince them that you thought it was important, not that they should think it was important.

I spent the better part of my teens without using dental floss, a task that many people told me was important. It wasn’t until a dentist looked me in the eyes and told me point blank that I was on the bullet train to gingivitis (and the impact that would have on me) that I cared about this thing that was oh-so-important. I’ve had great flossing habits ever since.

You need to find a way to connect the “important” things at your job to issues and impact that your employees will actually care about.

What are the things that will get them promoted or fired? What are the things that lead to awesome customer experiences? Heck, why did they want this kind of job anyways? Connect the important things to that.

Listen to your employees, try to understand them and what naturally motivates them. Connect the things that need doing to the things that help them stay motivated. I work fulltime in a medical office, and when we hire employees that genuinely care about taking care of patients, they are always motivated by the “important” things that are connected to good patient outcomes.

“But Patrick, what if I can’t find a way to connect x, y, and z to what motivates them?”

Well then why’d you hire them in the first place!?!? If you’ve got a task that requires maximum motivation to get done, then the completion of those tasks should be more closely tied with a hiring decision. You shouldn’t hire someone to be a hostess at your restaurant and then be confused as to why they aren’t motivated to work in the kitchen all day.

Lastly, there’s never a perfect fit between what you hope an employee gets done and what they actually get done. People are always going to cut little corners here and there, it’s natural. If your for “good enough” is 100% the right way, you’ll be disappointed every time. I consider 85-90% as a reasonable threshold for a task being completed that doesn’t involve safety or money.

Your job as the manager is to decide what’s good enough and where it isn’t ok to cut corners. Then, after you’ve worked to connect these must-haves to people’s natural motivations, you’ll have to remove the people from your department that don’t meet your threshold. The more people you have that are cutting too many corners, the more they’ll negatively influence their peers.

So the next time you have a couple minutes with this employee, you need to ask: “Hey, has anyone ever explained to you why x, y, and z are so important?” Listen to her answer and see if you can help her connect the essential tasks to something that might motivate her. I bet you’ll see marked improvement in her nightly task list.

Good luck out there,

Patrick

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