Are Lazy Employees Actually Hidden Gems?

There are a lot of talented people looking for their next opportunities across the AV employee landscape as the coronavirus pandemic has triggered wide-scale layoffs throughout the industry, from the largest to the smallest companies and even the associations that represent the people within the space.

Certainly, the conventional wisdom for most employers looking to fill open positions—especially at a time when there is more talent on the market than in a long time—is to hire the person with the best resume, a work ethic that won’t quit, and a go-getter attitude that could lead to a successful career.

But what if the best fit for your job opening is actually the laziest person out there?

That may sound strange at first blush, but it worked for Bill Gates in building Microsoft into one of the largest companies in the world and making him one of the richest people on Earth, which has led to years of philanthropy.

Bill Gates once said that he always hires lazy people to do the most important jobs. His reasoning, as he put it: “Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” We can’t help but to agree with his logic.

Redditor u/Slimer425 asked “What is the best real-life example of a lazy person getting the job done”, and people shared some creative and low effort solutions.

Surely, there are examples throughout AV of some of the laziest people in the company stepping into the breach to show its leaders a new, much more streamlined way of doing a task that used to be seen as one nobody wanted to do because of how complicated everyone believed it to be.

This is the time to be trying new and different things and finding new and different ways to satisfy your existing customers while engaging new ones.

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Again, I know it seems counterintuitive to reward laziness, but it could be that the person everyone thinks is the laziest is just feeling unchallenged in their menial work.

You could take the traditional route and let them join the ranks of the unemployed or you could try to find a way to help them find their path to success and they could in turn help you find a new path to efficiency no one had ever considered because “we’ve always done it this way.”

This post premiered on our sister site, Commercial Integrator.

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