Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash
Unpacking the Dumb and Lazy Job Phenomenon
If you've noticed an increase in people seeking to downsize or 'unboss' their careers you're onto something. Working-age adults, of all ages and backgrounds, are dodging opportunities to step it up in their careers.
In short, we're seeing a rise in demand for what's been termed, 'dumb' or 'lazy' jobs. We see this in data, articles, and of course the most valid indicator, quippy videos and reels on social media. People across industries and levels of education are actively seeking to alleviate stress by voluntarily moving into roles with less demands and greater predictability. There’s a real sense that people are having tough moments of reflection and asking questions about meaning, purpose, and the role of their career and work in creating the life they want.
The consequences for business and culture are real. Leaders struggle with greater reluctance in their teams to take on stretch roles – those jobs and projects that typically involve a bit of extra grit and discomfort. They're often quickly embraced by people taking a step forward to a potential promotion or greater financial compensation. It seems as if we're headed into uncharted territory; having to battle resistance to take on new responsibilities – something we usually take for granted.
At the same time, more than a third of the workforce has at least one side hustle. Additional employment or income-generating activity is often required economically, and it can bring valuable skill development. However, to leadership, it's also a signal that employees are choosing to invest their time and energy — a limited resource for all of us — elsewhere. Notably, the uptick in the decision to move laterally or down the career ladder is present in people of all ages with both younger and mid-career workers choosing to downshift or make lateral moves, often citing the choice to avoid additional stress and a potential lack of flexibility.
This doesn't come at a good time. As we ride an ever-rising wave of retirement and skill gaps in many industries this is a trend worth stopping if we can. It also comes at a point where the nature of our conversations with our employers about work is changing. The workforce is holding leaders accountable to new standards, specifically in how they contribute to a life that is more flexible and supports a holistic understanding of our life goals. Consider that -
- The majority of people who changed roles during The Great Resignation gave better work-life balance as the primary reason. Most of these job hoppers don't regret their decision and report an easier time balancing work and personal goals and responsibilities in their new roles.
- 95% of employees see finding an employer that recognizes the boundaries between work and nonwork time as very important.
- 72% of us see our employer as a partner in building a healthy lifestyle that supports overall well-being.
Workplace Stress and Employee Engagement
When we look closely at individual stories of career downsizing or choosing a 'dumb job' we see intentional decisions to eliminate stressors, unpredictability, and even mistreatment.
One former art director shared her path to arriving at her current role as project manager. Her decision came down to wanting greater control and a stronger sense of purpose. She felt a lot of her time and energy was forced into mitigating "arguing factions" within and outside her company. She viewed this as an obstacle to investing in more purposeful work and is now able to drive progress and results at a greater level in her current role while having a more predictable and flexible day-to-day.
As I was thinking about this, our work in the service sector and hospitality came to mind. While many restaurant and retail organizations want to promote from within, earning the willingness of frontline employees to move into management is tough. On top of this, according to TDn2K’s research, 35% of restaurant managers quit in their first year on the job. Lack of flexibility and struggles with integrating work into life were the main reasons driving this decision.
High potential frontline employees (potential future leaders) witness the struggles and eventual turnover of these managers creating additional unwillingness to step into management. Our ability to grow from within thrives or fails from what our workforce sees in frontline and middle management. As our key results map shows below, the quality of both the customer experience and team experience will never exceed the quality of what our leaders experience day-to-day.
In many cases, employees have incorrect assumptions about the difficulty or potential unpleasantness of a position. Take a recent study that explored the words high potential employees associate with advancement. They included:
- Resentment
- Competitive
- Blame
- Aggressive, and
- Pushy
While a communication plan and good PR efforts around scheduling, busy periods, support available, and expectations can help, there are often deep-seated beliefs, grounded in painful experiences, about what it means to take on additional responsibility.
If you're hearing a metaphorical siren right now, it might be because these people aren't choosing 'lazy' or 'dumb' jobs so much as they are seeking roles that support their well-being, connection to something meaningful, and engagement. It comes down to feeling a sense of shared understanding, receiving clear direction, and achieving something personally meaningful both within and outside of one's career. Ultimately, the downshifting trend we're wanting to stop stems from core needs going unmet for too long. We're neglecting the basics of delivering a positive employee experience. This makes for a ripe opportunity for organizations to act. In short, a solution is delivering a consistently positive, and personally meaningful, employee experience that drives engagement.
Strategies to Minimize Stress and Increase Engagement
For many business problems such as revenue or customer demand, we usually seek to gather data to understand the problem and isolate a solution. However, when a problem falls on the "people" side of things, we often start to drum up and implement solutions without the data to support it.
Whether it's one-on-one conversations, team meetings about career goals, or a survey, actively listening to our teams needs to be the first step to squashing the desire for a dumb job. Recently gathered feedback and data are also useful: not everything needs to become a new data collection effort (although us data geeks do enjoy it). If you're looking to explore these questions around downshifting, or a reluctance to invest more in your organization, consider looking at -
- Exit interview data. Why are people leaving, particularly leadership or the skilled individual contributor roles you're seeking to staff?
- Performance feedback/reviews and plans. These can help you understand where people are headed and why. What are they most interested in pursuing?
- Performance improvement plans. When managers are struggling, what are the reasons?
- Manager feedback. Talk to, or seek input from, those key frontline and mid-level managers. Where are they seeing resistance from their teams? What tasks, roles, and responsibilities are hard to fill?
With this in place, you can start to strategize ways that employees can job craft. Job crafting is anything that allows employees to tailor their work or a potential new role to what they find meaningful. This could mean a passion project for a frontline employee to explore what it's like to be a trainer or take on a new responsibility. Opportunities to engage in job crafting could scale across a company by providing clear direction to leaders on how to create an environment that encourages it across all locations, departments, and levels.
Feedback from active listening might also lead you to explore new ways of working and flexibility to find new ways of navigating work and life demands. For in-person operations, like in restaurants and retail, consider how scheduling and work demands can support the needs of the business while giving new flexibility to meet the needs and wants that you hear from leaders.
Active listening to your teams may lead you to uncover obstacles you didn't see or didn't know were causing the strain they're having. If they are unnecessary constraints that don't support operations, culture, or key results, eliminate them.
Creating a Culture of Engagement Driving Growth and Retention
Building a culture of engagement starts with open communication. We're unlikely to want to invest more time, cut back on a side hustle, or consider a long-term career with an organization that doesn't hear us. What easy-to-deliver practices would make employees more comfortable sharing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns? Are there any barriers, or actions by leaders, that cause team members to fear retribution?
This can be achieved through regular feedback conversations, where managers and team members engage in two-way dialogues to discuss performance, goals, and any issues that may be affecting their work. Think about how these conversations can be woven into the regular activities of managers. A weekly team meeting, for example, presents an opportunity to share upcoming special projects that need ownership by individual contributors. On the flip side, the same meeting provides an opportunity to recognize contributions and connect why they matter to your mission, culture, and results.
How we build teams who are willing to invest and grow also goes back to how we hire. A hiring process that includes assessing candidates for cultural fit through behavioral interviews and situational judgment tests makes drive and motivation possible. This ensures that new hires are not only capable of performing their job duties but are also aligned with the mindsets you need to achieve your mission. As a result, employees feel more connected to the organization and are motivated to contribute to its success, provide candid feedback, and drive higher levels of creativity and productivity.
Building a strong culture and reinforcing it through your employee experience also provides consistency. That predictability nurtures safety and the trust that comes from it. I've shared a few times this year alone the severity of the trust gap. Investing our time, wanting to grow, and pushing through challenges can't happen if we don't feel safe and trusted.
Investing in professional development shows employees that their growth is valued. This can be done by offering a variety of training programs, workshops, and seminars that cater to different skill levels and career aspirations. For instance, providing access to online courses, certifications, and industry conferences can help employees stay updated with the latest trends and advancements in their field. Communicating these opportunities through the lens of your culture and mission is particularly important.
Additionally, creating mentorship programs where experienced employees can guide and support newer team members can facilitate knowledge transfer and career development. Mentorship nurtures connection and shows employees vividly the what and how of growth. Providing, and clearly and consistently communicating, opportunities for advancement, such as clear career paths, internal promotions, and leadership development programs, can further motivate employees to stay engaged and committed to the organization.
Leadership's Responsibility for Positivity, Support, and Culture
As we shared earlier, the employee experience for your leaders sets a ceiling for your employees. The path to treating others with empathy and understanding is steep and less taken when we aren't receiving empathy. Leadership development, especially when it's infused with your culture, can teach leaders to uncover blind spots in the daily experience of employees.
When we gather employee feedback, whether through an employee experience and engagement survey or performance feedback initiative, there are consistent common blind spots leaders have around the employee experience. Some of the recurring obstacles by leaders getting in the way of growth could lead an employee to downshift or want a dumber job -
- Lack of recognition and appreciation. In the day-to-day and quarter-to-quarter of work and business, we know how this is overlooked, but the consequences are significant. Communicating how a win contributes to the organization's mission, and providing recognition in ways that are personally meaningful is a powerful antidote to the desire to downsize our contributions. Celebrating team wins, whether at a group or company-wide level, builds unity and a shared sense of belonging and pride.
- Lack of, or inconsistent, communication. When messages are not consistent, employees may receive conflicting information, leading to uncertainty about priorities and tasks. Often information is not communicated through the appropriate channel, adding to misunderstanding. This can be particularly problematic in geographically dispersed or hybrid work environments where communication channels are more varied and less direct.
- Inconsistent goals and expectations. Closely linked to communication, shifting goals erode trust and safety. Employees begin to feel that their hard work is pointless and downshifting looks like a reasonable (and healthier) path.
- Ignoring employee well-being. Like a child learning to ride a bike, it's easy for leaders to fall into only looking directly in front of the bicycle and not evaluating the path traveled or obstacles ahead. A lack of awareness of long hours, difficult contributions, or the sacrifice of personally important events moves employees to consider downshifting, quickly.
This means that leaders should not only manage their own stress effectively but sustain full awareness of their team's contributions, needs, and goals. By taking regular breaks, setting boundaries for work hours, and prioritizing personal well-being, for themselves as well as making that happen for others leaders can set the precedent and groundwork needed for drive and motivation to grow.
Additionally, showing empathy involves understanding and addressing the unique challenges that each team member faces, whether they are related to workload, personal issues, or professional development. Leaders who take the time to listen often uncover realistic solutions to meet the unique needs of each employee, building an experience for them that supports trust and motivation.
Let's stop the rise of the 'dumb' job and shift the course of those wanting to downsize. It comes from leaders failing to build places to work that support our growth and well-being instead of detracting from it. Accomplishing this requires an intense effort from leadership to consistently deliver an employee experience where leaders listen, seek to understand, and connect with their teams. The workforce demanding that work and employment support our well-being signifies a critical turning point and is not a passing trend we can ignore. We can, however, change how we lead and build safe, trusting, and engaging places to work that are irresistible to the high-potential people we need to invest and join us to do great things together.
