Why Hiring A Lazy Person Could Be The Best Thing For Your Company
So Forbes’ 2015 list of The World’s Billionaires came out early this month. It comes as no surprise that Bill Gates once again ‘Topped the Charts’. I mean he has held on to that position for like, only 16 times for the 21 years Forbes has been running that list. They might as well call it Forbes’ Bill Gates understudy list.
If you didn’t get a chance to view the list of 2015’s members of the Billionaire’s Club, head on to this link, to be redirected to Forbes website. Now putting Forbes aside and delving more into Bill Gates or rather a puzzling quote from him:
If you were being interviewed for an HR position at a certain firm and you happen to mention these words by Mr. Gates. You are more likely to raise the hair on the back of your interviewers than raising their faith in your qualification as an HR Manager. Hiring a lazy person?? Really!!
Then again, Gates is the richest person in the known Universe realm, so he probably knows what he’s talking about. He must be doing something right, for him to own a stake worth $79.2B.
But less talk about his money and more about his statement! Obviously I can’t know what was on his mind, so am just speculating here. My money is on; Mr. Gates was not talking about a lazy person in the definition of one who can’t meet certain performance standards. Rather a lazy person in the sense that he or she can achieve a task with little to no visible efforts albeit their laziness is just as real. The former is incompetence while the later is the good-old-fashioned loafer.
In defense of laziness, this might be a symptom of something bigger; maybe Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or some other psychological condition that can be better explained by a psychologist. Be that as it may, hiring a lazy person might just turn out to be exactly what your company needs.
Using an employee’s ‘laziness’ for the company’s good, can be done by motivating the employee enough to want to accomplish the task at hand. Their ‘laziness’ will kick-in and get in their way and here is where all the magic begins. They will conjure up new ideas, plans, and techniques. That will help them to not only get the work done faster and be out of their way, but also they will do it better. They can also teach the other ‘hard working’ employees new ways of doing things quicker and better.
How do you motivate your lazy employee?
If you can find answers to the following questions, then you have hit the jackpot that is the innovative lazy employee.
Why are they idle? It is possible that they might have an easier way of getting things done. So they either finished the work earlier, or they know they will finish before the deadline is due, although they haven’t started and don’t appear to be in a hurry just yet. You should learn their secret, and have them teach the other employees.
Why are they bored? The might just not find the task at hand that involving or thrilling enough. You should assign them work that challenges them or give them assignments with greater responsibilities that give them a sense of self-actualization.
Why are they slothful? They appear to be dilly-dallying around the workplace. You should provide them with more room to accomplish more, by putting up challenges, goals, targets, acknowledgment and of course rewards. This will sure ‘unleash the dragon’ that sleeps within them.
Why are they distracted? They quickly lose interest and concentration on the task at hand. You should assign them a task that is highly involving and runs for a shorter period. They simply can’t keep their interest and concentration on one thing for a long time, but when they do, they give it their So find involving task that they will accomplish fast, rather than easy tasks that take a long time to achieve.
I think Gates was more along this line of thinking than advocating tolerating incompetence. So if you happen to be a frustrated manager of a lazy lot of employees, perhaps your approach is all wrong, and you only need to rethink your approach.