Committed & Not So Committed Workers (#16)

What causes a lack of commitment among workers, and what can you do to solve it?

Why aren't your workers as committed as you are?

To some people that might seem arrogant or narcissistic, to assume that you, as the leader, are working harder or more dedicated or committed to the cause of your business than your employees. However, as those of you who lead businesses know:

There are many times, particularly during the startup phase, that leaders may go without pay. Leading a business requires a lot of personal sacrifice.

Most employees are willing to put what they consider to be a reasonable amount of effort into their job, in order to get ahead and to be successful. If they have a great team and a great boss, then they are even more likely to want to support the business outside the context of their specific role.

Essentially, the organization has less magnetic power than the team with which the employee personally works.

As an example, a football player might play hard because he's got a contract with the NFL. He might work hard because he wants his organization, say the Cowboys, to win. He might work hard because he wants to be a contributing and leading member of the team of individuals he plays with and respects. Furthermore, he might also want to win because he wants to win more than anything else.

• Generally, for someone to get into the NFL, they have to want to do that more than anything else.¹ This means that the team is made up of individuals who all want to win and want to play football more than they want to do anything else. The organization has a lot of desires, and winning is one of them, but it isn't everything.

• They have shareholders to think about, merchandise sales, and other financial interests that underpin their organization. Each of those organizations, in turn, rolls up into the NFL as a whole. The NFL doesn't necessarily care which team wins, as long as whoever does win (or who loses) draws sufficient attention and engagement from fans.

• So, the NFL player, himself, is committed to his success first. Next, he's committed to his team's success. Finally, he might be somewhat committed to the organization and the NFL as a whole, depending on his contract and how he perceived their treatment of him.

Employment Perspectives

The same thing is true in the typical business. Individual associates are working for your company because you pay them a reasonable amount for a reasonable amount of work. The goal of their work and the depth of their commitment is tied to the importance this job has on their life.

In some cases, you might have people who are desperate for a job, or desperately need a certain level of income in order to maintain their lifestyle or escape some sort of debt or financial trouble. These people, are not committed, they are indentured.

Indentured work, is most commonly associated with slavery. Now, certainly your organization isn't interested in slave labour, but you must understand the association that people will make if they feel that they are indentured.

An associate might feel indentured because they have made poor decisions in their life and have put themselves into a financial hole. Employment at your company could save them. In that case, they might see their work, which they don't like (likely because they are stressed, depressed, or have anxiety about their personal life), as servitude, and assume that the problem stems from your company.

Again, it is asinine to believe that while gainfully employed for an organization in the West that one is somehow experiencing anything like slavery. It's a ridiculous idea. But it's an extremely common perspective of those who, because of the pressures and constraints of their own life, feel compelled to work a job without which they could not sustain their life.

I call this perspective the Subsistence Employment Mindset.

Subsistence employment, or the mindset that someone must work or do an undesirable job in order to sustain their lifestyle or family, has its roots in reality. Many places in the world do engage in indentured servitude,