Motivate And Manage Lazy Employees Instead Of Firing Them

Delays, putting things, decisions off does surely have a reason. The problem is that you can't just fire that employee, if you know he/she's intelligent and gifted and you don't want to lose that person. People hesitate and delay for different reasons. The solution is to define them and get rid of them to motivate employees to work better.

At work, the reason may be one of the following factors or a complex of several of them:

• Negative idea about incentives and rewards.

Maybe the last experience showed to the employee that there's no need working hard, as it won't bring any recognition or encouragement, no job rewards, no incentives...just "go on, go on".

• Job climate, including surrounding people.

In some cases, the physical space where the work is supposed to be carried out, may be the problem: too noisy, quiet, light, dark, hot or cold, or surrounding people demand of the employee giving too much attention to other things.

• Thinking that the goal is too heavy to get, the task is too complex.

An employee may be assigned a challenge which is very hard to afford all alone. For example, an administrative assistant responsible for communications between departments, for business letters, etc., can receive the task to define the policy and procedures of the company.
After a time and when he realizes the scale of the project imposed, the employee can start mistrusting his own powers and capacities to execute it or to understand, that he's not strong/smart enough to finish the task.

Of course, there may be other reasons.
Below are some recommendations to help managers cope with the problem of delays and lack of motivation.

• The first, that it is necessary to understand by a chief or a manager, is the reason of delay. Talk to the employee about the reason of the problem, then specify in what direction to move or make respective alterations to the given task.

What positive indications or variations the management can make to motivate and help the employee finish the work?

• If the employee is worried about what consequences will be entailed in case of non-fulfilment or performance of a task, then engage in it and explain, what consequences it can really lead to.

If the employee is still uncomfortable with your explanations, then pass the job to someone else.

• If it seems that the person in charge is in doubt of getting an incentive or being favoured/rewarded, explain the importance and benefits his job would bring to the company and it's cause. Also, as above, discuss with him the real positive consequences of performance. Again, don't forget that any work must be rewarded.

• If the employee is distracted by physical conditions or other people in the working area, try to minimize those irritants or change the place of the job's accomplishment, as well as take care of that during performance of a job, the employee had not to work at the same time on some other tasks assigned to other people.

• If the employee thinks that the problem is far more complicate than he can handle, first of all you hit the tricky points of its contents together with the employee and define, whether or not it is obviously so and impracticable, or it's just the employee's erroneous perception.

If you believe that the employee will cope with that problem, try to develop together possible decisions, to help break the task into several affordable parts and establish deadlines.
However, the job may actually happen to be more than that employee can bear. In that case, define for yourself what is the better way out. Whether or not it is worth assigning that job to a team, or you have enough manpower resources, or you already have such teams.
Maybe it's better to involve a professional adviser to help your employee, at least, up to a point where he can manage independently? In this case you have many options.

After completing the above said positive actions by the manager, it is necessary to motivate the employee to stop delaying and finish the job.