3 Reasons Why You're Struggling with Unmotivated Workers - Delightree

Sometimes, during a frustrating afternoon when nothing is going right, you look at the high school student working the register without much effort and feel hopeless. Minimum wage workers tend to be young, and the work can feel disposable to them.

All of the work you put into building a business comes down to the person operating the store. That is your waiter, host, chef, manager, and cashier. Years spent planning a brand show up in the delivery at the counter. A business without strong front-line workers is like a slide deck with great information that is too hard to read.

Your front-line, deskless, hourly workers are your delivery.

Three reasons your hourly workers are unmotivated at work

1. They want to care about your business, but they do not see where they fit

Whether it is an 18-year-old or a 25-year-old working in the back, you need whoever is working in your business to be invested in your brand. The hospitality and leisure industry carries some of the highest employee turnover of any sector, and hourly roles are among the toughest to keep filled. It is tempting to treat hourly workers as the part of the team that will never be as invested, but that is not true. They want to care about your business; they just are not sure where they fit in.

Upward mobility is the easiest fix. Most hourly workers feel they will be passed over for a promotion. If there is no room to grow inside your business, why would they care about the business at all?

Imagine this. You rent a short-term vacation home, you are resting on the couch, and you spill a little chocolate on the carpet. You might ignore it if it is small, wipe it up quickly with a napkin, or dab it with your finger and reassure yourself that no one will notice.

Now picture the same spill in a home you own or plan to live in for years. You are frustrated, worried about the carpet, fast and thorough about cleaning it up, and far more careful next time.

Be honest. Does your store get treated like a rental or like a home? If you say home, is it treated that way by anyone other than you? The simplest answer is to give your hourly workers a real path to grow.

2. You have no way to track their performance

How do you measure good talent? Do you have a way to track the performance of your workers? When you cannot, your people cannot work at their full potential.

Performance tracking is normal for managers and higher-ranking staff, but rarely for hourly workers. Deskless work is often a group effort, so even the hardest worker can get overlooked when there is no clear way to see who completed which tasks. An "as long as the floor is clean, I do not care who did it" mentality breeds resentment among workers whose effort goes unnoticed.

The first step to motivating employees through accountability is tracking their performance. You cannot be everywhere at once, so consider using an app like Delightree to track accountability across locations.

3. They do not know you well enough to care

If your hourly workers seem slow or sluggish, it can be a sign they do not know you well enough to care about your business. Communicate more with your front-line staff. Introduce yourself, then reintroduce yourself to people who have stayed with the company. Show up to meetings, celebrate long-term employees, and communicate openly. Record training videos for new hires when you are too busy to be there in person. Technology makes it easy to reach every level of your team.

It is never too late to think hard about how to build more invested employees. Do not treat your front-line workers as an afterthought once the planning and the expansion are done. Invest in them.