A lawn care guy at the bank reminded me of exactly who I used to be.
I was at the bank the other day and overheard a lawn care owner catching up with someone he knew. Business is great, he said, fully booked. But he has decided to just do it all himself now, because nobody wants to work anymore. He pays $15 an hour, and all they do is sit on their phones, won’t do the work right, won’t double-check themselves.
And I sat there thinking, man, I have been exactly where you are.
I am not telling you this to make him the villain. I am telling you because I was him. Years ago, before I knew what I was doing, I paid my technicians $15 an hour and figured I was being generous. I did not understand team culture. I did not know what to look for in an interview. I did not even know how to write a decent job ad. So I get it. Some of you reading this are still in that hole, and it is a hole.
Let’s talk about that $15
When I was paying $15 an hour, it was several dollars above minimum wage. That mattered. Today, here in Florida, $15 an hour is one dollar above minimum wage. And come this September, $15 will be the minimum.
So when that guy talked about $15 like he was doing his crew a favor, the truth is he was paying a dollar over the legal floor for hard, physical, skilled work. That is not a living wage. And you cannot pay the floor and then act shocked when people treat it like a floor job.
Hiring someone is not a favor
Somewhere along the way, a lot of employers got the idea that we are doing people a favor just by hiring them and paying them. We are not. Showing up is the bare minimum of what the paycheck buys. That is the baseline, not the finish line.
People go above and beyond for employers who go above and beyond for them. Who engage with them. Who actually care, invest in their training, treat them like a human and not a number, give them room to move up, and hand out the raises and the bonuses and the plain old “hey, great job” when it is earned. If you hire someone at $15 and expect them to break their back for you, they probably will not. And honestly, why would they?
“But they should prove themselves first”
I know the counterargument. People should earn it before you pay up. And I am not totally against that. But here is my question: why not pay them well while they prove themselves? Pay fair, set the bar, and if they do not clear it, have the conversation.
That is the part people skip. Nobody wants the hard conversation. Nobody wants to say “this is not working,” or “we need to coach you up,” or “I have to move you back a level.” So instead they start everyone as low as possible and figure they will bump them up later. Later rarely comes. People just sit at the bottom rung for a long, long time, and then they leave.
Ask yourself the uncomfortable questions
So before “it is impossible to find good people” comes out of your mouth again, turn it inward:
- What does my job ad actually look like?
- What am I really paying, and what does that number say about the job?
- What do my benefits look like, if I have any?
- Who am I actually trying to attract? Because if I want a $20 to $25 an hour work ethic, that person is not even going to click on a $15 ad.
- What is my team culture? Do my people like each other? Do they like me? Do I engage with them?
- When someone messes up, is it a coaching moment, or do they get yelled at?
That last one matters more than you think, and I know it from the other side of the desk.
The job that wasn’t worth it
Years ago, newly married and about twenty, I worked the front desk for a family law firm. I was barely trained. They shuffled me around, running errands, even picking up an attorney’s kids and dry cleaning, then dropped me back at reception. And one of the partners, near as I could tell, spent his day listening to my phone calls looking for something to correct.
One day I answered, and someone asked for an attorney who was not in yet. I said, “I am so sorry, he is not in yet, can I take a message?” Simple. Out comes the partner, leans on my counter, crosses his arms, and asks, “What could we have done differently on that call?”
I was terrified, and I genuinely had no idea. He told me: saying “he is not in yet” makes the attorney look like a slacker, because “yet” implies he should already be there. I should have said he was not available, or was in a meeting. Fair enough, and honestly it stuck with me. But that was the culture. Every call, a hunt for what I did wrong.
About two months later, I came home broken out in hives from the stress. My husband looked at me and said, please, just quit, we will figure it out. No job is worth this.
He was right. Not every job is worth it. So here is the flip side of “nobody wants to work”: are you making your job worth wanting? Are you making it sticky?
What sticky actually looks like
Here is the other end of it. This morning, a former team member who had stepped away for some real health issues walked into my office. She did things the right way when she left, gave us notice, handled it like a pro. And she came back to tell us she has a clean bill of health, and she wants to come back. “This is where I want to be. I love you guys. This is the only job I want.”
That filled my heart all the way up. We are not perfect, not even close. But someone choosing to come back, out of every option she has, tells me the work we have put into the culture is real. And it is work. Constant work.
So do the audit
Evaluate all of it. Your job ad. Your pay. Your culture. The way you talk to your people. If you are not sure where you stand, run an anonymous survey with your staff, and brace yourself, because you might learn things you do not want to hear. Learn them anyway. You cannot fix what you will not look at.
My unofficial motto at work, and I really should put it on a shirt: I cannot fix a problem I do not know about.
So if you have ever caught yourself saying there are no good workers out there, that nobody wants to work anymore, sit with that for a second. Then let’s actually work through it. Because it is almost never the people. It is the job.
If the hiring side is where you feel stuck, I put together a free guide, Hiring, Paperwork and Protection, that walks through hiring right and covering your business. It is yours at myprofitpathways.com.