There is no such thing as a lazy employee

There’s no such thing as a lazy employee.

Do you agree? Here’s what I think…

Have you ever managed someone who you just thought to yourself, They’re just plain lazy. Maybe you even described them like that to others.

As people, we seem to have a compulsive need to sort everyone else into these fixed categories. We observe their behaviours in a particular setting (e.g. work) and then decide that this is what these people must be.

A common box to put people in is lazy.

But how do we explain why someone is lazy at work, but – when at the Monday morning check in – the same person describes a weekend of hard work for their community group? Or in their garden? Or on their house?

Is it possible that they reveal their true lazy colours at work, but manage to trick everyone outside of work into thinking that they’re hard workers? Unlikely.

What is more likely is that the person is not lazy at all, they’re just exhibiting lazy behaviours at work because they’re disengaged.

There are a couple of critical points here.

The first is to slow our impulse to define people as, for example, lazy or an idiot. Instead we can be a little more sophisticated in our thinking – a little more open-minded – by simply describing their behaviours and choices as lazy or idiotic.

If we focus on people’s behaviours, rather than writing them off as this or that, we give ourselves the chance as managers to work with them to change their behaviour.

If we’re fixed on defining them as lazy, we will tend not to try and to work with them. We will think, why would I bother, nothing I do will change the fact they’re just plain lazy.

The second point is to reframe the description of employees as disengaged, rather than lazy. Seeing people as disengaged internalises our responsibility for engaging our teams. Describing them as lazy externalises the blame back to the employee.

Furthermore, disengagement is an issue that we can work with, when provided with the right tools and understanding of employee engagement. Laziness is not.

Does that mean that employees shouldn’t be held responsible for their lazy behaviours? No, they absolutely should be. The behaviour should be described to them and support provided to them to change it, as part of a healthy manager-team member accountability conversation.

If the person has been provided with a reasonable level of direction, support and time, but fails to respond, then it might be time to consider the person’s future in the team.

It might be time to consider whether the team would be better off finding a replacement who will more naturally be engaged by the environment. And whether the under-performing team member might be better off finding an alternative organisation where they’re more naturally engaged.