Motivation among American workers is on the wane this year, and a majority of them aren’t highly engaged with their jobs — reducing their productivity — a new survey shows.
Hmm I wonder why. Could it be because we can't fucking afford anything?! Could it be because wealth inequality has been at a high that we've never seen before? Could it be because our world is slowly dying and nobody seems to care? Could it be because literal Nazis are roaming the streets and nothing is being done about it?
For me, in addition to all those other things, it’s that even most “good” companies are abusive, so there’s no escape. It’s just “how much abuse are you willing to put up with to work here?”, rather than “this place isn’t abusive”, and I can’t do that roulette anymore.
I’m taking some time off to reassess everything. Maybe in 6 months of absolutely minimal living (to coast on savings) I’ll feel better about it, but with the way things are racing downhill and picking up speed, I’m not optimistic.
Idk... I mean sure, the price of literally everything is outpacing my stagnant income, and my benefits are increasingly shit... But there's a banner outside the parking lot I'm not allowed to use (admins only!) that says "Heroes work here!"
Ya hear that?! I'm a fuckin hero, y'all!! I can't not be motivated now!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go shed a single tear while eating a meal of white rice. Again. With some soy sauce packets I stole from the cafeteria.
Seriously. What is this propagandist bullshit? Fucking sorry excuse for "journalism", Bloomberg. Blame the prols? Is that it? Push us to judge each other, to shame our fellow replaceables until what? We roll out the guillotine again? I'm here for it.
I'll even paint mine up so it says "Heroes work here!" right up at the top, so everyone knows who's pulling the ripcord. How about that?
Forcing folk back into the office is pretty darn unpopular. If I was part of the group required to return to the office I would also be pretty damn unproductive and pissed as well.
I work a hybrid schedule and am always far less productive at the office than at home. Not even by choice, the environment is just less conducive to my being able to work comfortably.
Motivated employees get taken advantage of with more work with no pay raises. These workers have finally learned and reduced their production to be even with those around them.
P.S. If this is you, like it was me, learn entrepreneurship. The harder you work, the more success you have.
The key is to have enough to fail. That's why you see successful house flippers or whatever who started out with money. They may have started 2 or 3 businesses before they found what worked.
If you start out with only enough money for one business or house, you will be struggling for a long time because you have to make it work to survive. You have no money to expand if it's a good idea and no money to quit and start over.
The best thing to start with is luck. Second best is enough money, so you can try several times.
When I started, I setup hosting and created 100 websites selling other people’s products. It was like $50/mo to do it. There’s ways to start a business without capital.
These days I would do TikTok videos selling other peoples products. No hosting needed
I mean if your definition of success is being rewarded with more work with no pay raise then sure, but that's just not true anymore. People used to believe that and they got taken advantage of, and you even addressed this in the first part of your comment. The real lesson needs to come from the top down. If you want your employees to work harder, pay them more.
You missed a part of the comment you are replying to. tygr said "The harder you work, the more success you have." in relation to the previous sentence about changing from wage slave to entrepreneur.
Executives are constantly sucking up all the profits for themselves and putting more workload on everyone else. Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that corporate executives are robbing them blind.
I’ve noticed this trend at several of my businesses. It’s impossible to find good help, I even offer all sorts of fun perks like themed thursdays where everybody has to dress up to match whatever theme I pick and whoever does it best gets a Starbucks gift card. Whenever it’s somebody’s birthday that person brings in pizza for everybody to share.
I think the pandemic and government hand outs have made people extra lazy, even more than they were before.
Have you considered pressuring your employees into donating to a charity of your choice with part of their paycheck? My job does that. It’s wonderful to add another charitable contribution to the list of things I spend my meager paycheck on, really helps me feel fulfilled. Maybe this is what your workplace is missing.
And, it’s like you’re crowdfunding your own corporate PR! Win-win for everyone!
That’s not a bad idea. Then once I’ve gotten the employees to donate a certain amount like $5,000 I can deliver it to the charity myself in the form of a big cardboard check, and do a photo op and put it in the company newsletter so everybody knows how good I am.
Wtf, that sounds horrible, most of people want to be paid more for their work so they can live fulfilling lives, not have part of their paycheck taken away from them.
Just pay your employees more, whether through capital or shares of the company. That's what motivates people.
Not sure if this is sarcasm but I'm pretty sure I'm only motivated by a good raise and not cheesy "company culture". Especially since the price everything is up so much, a 25$ gift card which pays for maybe 1.94 cups of coffee is not going to make a difference
Right. Only squeaky wheels get greased. If you don't actively bitch and moan or threaten to leave, your company will never give you more because they assume you're happy.
Mine gave me what appeared to be a fairly sizeable performance bump, percentage-wise, at the beginning of the calendar year.
But when I calculated it out in comparison to all the other increases they'd given me, accounted for inflation as measured by CPI, and excluded the amounts given in "class-wide" salary adjustments, the dollar amount was really put into perspective.
Per their own HR policy, an individuals position within their defined salary band is determined by their skill/merit achievements relative to the job position. Because a class wide salary adjustment also redefines the salary band, and I have a habit of snapshotting the salary bands every few months, I was able to prove with numbers that A) they'd only ever actually given me one "merit increase" that matched the words they use in my review to an actual, measurable, "skill increase" as measured by an individual's position in the salary band.
And because the others had been so poor, using their own HR policy, they were effectively stating that I was only 2-3% better at my job than when they hired me 4+ years ago. Which was impossible, because if it were true, why would they have me actively mentoring individuals more highly paid but in the same band as myself?
It was compelling enough that they offered me an in-department "promotion" to the next grade and it came with one of two new roles, which I was allowed to trial and choose between. HR had previously squashed the grade increase two times over the previous two years, saying I didn't have enough experience, despite pushback from the three levels of management over me. (Our HR is like comic book villain levels of sanctimonious overpowered karens left to their own devices, and are actively holding the whole company back.)
Because I was able to use their own language to state, "either I'm good enough to do the X,Y,Z you currently have me doing and therefore deserve more; or I'm not and therefore should not be responsible for the things I do for the team and will essentially 'behave my class' and stop doing them," I forced their hand.
Good chuckle at the "Starbucks gift card". I haven't had a good manager that gave those out. Almost a perfect signal for bad management. "oh thanks... You paid Starbucks for me. How special"
The whole gift card market probably consists of: scammers ; bad management; lazy parents.
I implore you to look into the benefits of paying people more for their work, not only does it improve the lives of your workers to be able to not just have a living wage, but a wage they can thrive on. Even the US department of Economy points to raising of wages as a benefit not just to the workers but also to the companies in increased productivity and satisfaction from workers.
It feels like we’re just a dot in a complex scatterplot, the way statistics can measure and index an employee’s motivation. Maybe they can even use the same math to measure your own motivation. Imagine getting fired because you “lacked motivation” according to a computer. Maybe that’s not how we should cooperate as a species.
I used to think doxking your pay was fake until it happened to my coworker. His car broke down and he missed his first day ever. The coal mine cut his pay by 3 dollars.
He still spends all of his time starting fights with the union people and removed about how they protect the lazy.
My workplace recently showed us the results from our yearly survey..
If it wasn’t anonymous (which frankly it might not be) they literally have that information for us, but from self report. They called out that company wide (under 200 total employees) there are 10 people actively disengaged (I’m one of them) and a third of the company is barely engaged.
The sad thing is everyone spent the rest of that day talking about how much it sucks that so many people are disengaged, and how those people must not understand how great it is, like it was scandalous to not love working here.
Funny I know of a survey like that but for a company of only about 50 and it was 55% of the company was disengaged and they had an emergency meeting to cover the sadness facing their employees. Bragged about management until one of them said they were in the disengaged group
Since then an entire location was shut down and all employees fired there and 3 aupervisors have quit.
Still plenty of conversation on the sadness of company work but in whispers and private conversation
Businesses that are projecting growth, but are in cost saving mode, had layoffs, sub inflation raises, and hiring freezes aren't exactly doing much to drive morale.
Got a ton of education, qualifications and experience to work my way up through various jobs. Finally took a job a few years back with a significant pay raise... That is, until inflation offset the wage gains.
So yeah I'm 10-15% less motivated than I was previously. Every year in this economy that one doesn't get a 10% raise, it is functionally the same as taking a pay cut.
As someone who just got the first raise in 3 years (the last one was 2% as well) and it was 2% because they felt bad and said it's for cost of living, I just laughed and said this is insulting more than useful...
CFO didn't like how IT wasn't her whipperbilly anymore and decided to replace their management because fuck everyone else, priorities, and shitty budgets affecting her stuff first. Installs yes man as replacement CIO with no other experience or IT training.
the expected ensues, including narcissist fuckwad micromanager
I pack up my stuff and come in early. Photograph it in a pile before locking it away.
ask buddy to walk me to HR to add something to my file as I give him the key
"effective immediately" the thing said
"I'm not signing anything more," I said.
get the gbye handshake from a trusted peer, walk to the bus stop, catch the bus arriving presently
ignore the calls even when they call my wife looong after they already killed my login.
start my new job the next week for 3% pay cut (parity after first year), 100% WFH written in union contract, at a shop where I know the staff and they're used to suffering me, which since I've left has shed its shitty management and left largely the good ones behind
I quit my job in January. Fuck being a wage slave. Fuck making other people rich. I'm done with all that. I'll live a simple life with little money rather than go back to that self destructive misery.
I live in an off-grid RV doing freelance work. It's a financial struggle sometimes but I would say my overall quality of life has improved dramatically.
I think the difference is burnout. Shit has been getting worse at a quicker pace, and we are absolutely showered with worse and worse bad news every day.
That builds, man. And its hard to keep going when it does.
Shotgun applications to everyone in the field you want to go into, you might end up with your dream job, and know you can find something else should you not like the job you're in, but give it a fair shot before you decide to jump ship.