Last month, the term "mentally retired" was in the news again. Health scientist Jenny Huijs conducted research into this phenomenon. You probably also know someone like this in your own environment: a colleague, who, as Jenny Huijs describes it, has absolutely no connection with the company anymore, is not appreciated by colleagues and has no desire to learn new things.
For example, six months ago I myself encountered one Henk in one of our training programs. When asked what he wanted out of the program, the answer was clear: nothing. When I asked him whether it would not be a waste of his time (and ours) to sit there, he could not answer. I persisted anyway and asked him what his motivation was at work (or elsewhere). He had a clear answer to that: his retirement.
There was some pitying laughter among themselves, but generally Henk was ignored. In any case, it didn't help the atmosphere in the group. And Henk is not the only one within the business community. On average, more than 1 in 8 employees seems to have already retired mentally.
The misconception here is often that the mental pensionados are the ones who in terms of age are already actually heading toward retirement. Those who sit out their time until they are allowed to wave goodbye. It becomes worrying when you consider that it particularly affects those in their thirties and forties. Employees who should be in the prime of their careers, but who have completely lost their ambition and inspiration in their daily work and confidence in their managers.
Managers often take such a situation for granted: he or she is just like that. Nonsense! As a manager, you thereby assume the same victim role as your mentally retired colleague. Of course it is more fun to invest your time and energy in the best horses in the stable, as evidenced by the rise of talent management programs. Only this is often only a small part of the team.
Not knowing how to motivate the mentally retired person on your team is simply a big risk. Such a person not only gets in the way of himself and underperforms, but also spreads negativity within the rest of the team. Let alone if this employee also interacts with customers. Count your gains (or losses).
The physicist Neil Degrasse Tyson described it beautifully:
"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation."
If your employee is not so successful for a while and cannot manage to create motivation himself, help him with that. Our experience shows, as does the aforementioned research, that simple interventions such as different responsibilities, a new (team) goal or freer working hours can help. This requires effort from both sides, but pays off for the entire team.
At least Henk's team had made nice progress. As a team, they had renewed motivation and a new goal to work on. And even Henk walked out the door beaming for the first time in ages. He was able to take some concrete steps for himself.
And, to top it off, he was also 8 hours closer to retirement.
