When employees seem uninspired:

Last week I wrote about what to do when YOUR inspiration is on empty. 

Now, what to do when your employees are experiencing the same. 

And let me just state the obvious: the world feels heavy right now. From political turmoil, economic uncertainty, wars, etc its no wonder employees could be feeling emotionally depleted. 

We alllll know how those things absolutely play a role in how employees can show up at work. 

But today I want to focus on the things within our control. Like what workplace dynamics are silently draining the inspo even more and what HR can do about that. 

TBH: Most work environments optimize for efficiency not energy. 

At the risk of sounding silly, the vibes are off. 

And when the vibes are off things like engagement, productivity, satisfaction, and inspo all begin to dip. 

So, what’s sucking the life out of everyone at work? 

What’s sucking the life out of us at work:

Going to work shouldn’t feel like a run-in with an energy vampire where you show up and instantly you feel drained. 

But the truth is, a lot of folks are having that experience!!!

Energy vampires could be infiltrating your workplace:

🎨 Lack of creative ownership: Are your leaders defaulting to control? Does everything feel scripted, pre-scoped, and templated to the max? When there’s no room for input, play, or creativity, inspiration flatlines fast.How can anyone feel inspired when the path is already mapped out? Employees don’t want to be robotic task machines, they want to shape how the work gets done. They want to feel trusted, not just used. Something to keep in mind is that under pressure, a lot of managers get tactical and rigid, often turning to micromanagement. Take a hard look at your leaders and ask yourself are they creating space for ownership, or are they overengining everything? 

💬 Nonexistant feedback: Is feedback in your org rare, vague, or only delivered when something goes wrong? OOF. That silence says a lot… potentially indicating to employees their work doesn’t really matter. When people don’t know what’s landing, what’s appreciated, or what’s growing their impact, it’s hard to stay motivated and inspired. Generic praise does not cut it and isn’t encouraging! 

🧩 No connection to the why: Can your employees tell you WHY their work matters? Nothing zaps inspo faster than work becoming a checklist with no connection to the broader picture. People want to know: What’s my impact and why should I care? Without those answers, employees could lose the fuel that keeps them going! Cough inspiration cough. 

🔕 No time to recharge: If every minute of every day is filled with meetings, messages, and deliverables, there’s no space for inspiration to show up. Constant movement doesn’t actually mean progress… it just means exhaustion and potentially distraction from the things that matter! Ideas need space to breathe. Energy needs time to refill. A calendar that’s always “on” can slowly drain the spark out of someone! 

Before jumping to “employees seem like they’re in a bad mood“, consider the energy vampires that might be in the room with them. 

And like Buffy, HR can slay those energy vampires. 

Am I taking this analogy too far? 🙂 

What HR can do:

Okay, Slayers LOCK IN.  Wow, I think my wildest dreams just came true because I’ve always wanted to say that!!!!! 

But in all seriousness, there’s a way to combat those energy vamps. 

Here are a few things to try: 

⏰ Protect time: things like no meeting blocks, async work days or even blocking creative deep working hours can help protect time so inspiration can blossom. Not everything at work can be urgent. Think of urgency as the killer of inspo! There needs to be time for employees to just exist and think. 

Do me a favor? Do a quick calendar audit. Are your employees spending too much time in meetings? That can be the perfect data point to push forward things like no meeting days!

🧪 Foster experimentation: Remember when you were a kid at school and you had time to try new things and you had that never-ending sense of wonder? I want to bring that energy to work!!! Things like hackathons, passion projects or even time-blocked sprints could give employees the space to PLAY at work. 

Something to try: the next time your company rolls out an initiative, new project, or wants to fix something consider doing a hackathon! Make it low stakes and high fun so inspiration can actually flow. We’re all just chasing that flow state at work I guess.

📚 Building learning into work: I started my HR journey doing L&D work and I love love love talking about to making learning something fun at work. Instead of doing things like one-off training, think about how to incorporate learning into the day to day moments. Simple things like sharing articles, peer learning sessions, or even lunch and learns led by employees can really stir up inspo. 

We try to incorporate learning into our weekly all-hands by featuring cool projects and teaching folks across the org what’s being built. We also recently started doing AI Power Hours 2X a week to explore different use cases for AI. In our last session we had 2 employees share how they’ve been leveraging AI. The response was super positive and folks were excited about potential use cases to explore. 

💬 Lean on your managers: Not to put one more thing on managers BUT managers can drum up inspo simply by asking better questions. Share these questions with them and ask them to try asking in their next 1:1:

• What’s a part of your role you wish you could do more of?
• What’s one idea you’ve had lately that you haven’t shared yet?
• If you had a free day to work on anything here, what would you tackle?
• What’s something you’ve seen elsewhere that you’d love to bring into our team?
• What’s been feeling stale or repetitive in your work?
• What’s a skill or area you want to explore next?
• When’s the last time something at work made you feel excited or proud?
• What’s one blocker that, if removed, would make work feel more energizing?
• What do you think we’re not talking about enough as a team?
• What’s something weird, fun, or risky you’ve wanted to try but haven’t?

Your homework: Identify ONE opportunity that could stroke the inspo fire in your organization. 

I promise you, there is at least one! 

What’s next:

I hope you’re not mad at me for assigning homework! But I promise there is inspo all around us, everywhere. 

When things get stale we tend to disengage so let’s create moments of play and see what happens to the employees and you!!! 

I’ve been dabbling quite a bit in the intangibles of watch employees want but there’s something very tangible I want to talk about next week to round out this quarter. 

Employees just want better benefits… yup! Get ready to hear more about the benefits of the future as we wrap up Q2.