What happens when your best people feel underutilized (and what to do about it)

You know that feeling that you were meant for more. You’re in a situation and it’s going okay and it’s fine, but you’re looking around and you’re like, gosh, I can do better than this. There’s more out there for me. Well, this is what our teams are feeling right now. LinkedIn just put out a report that said 58% of employees feel like they’re underutilized. 58% of employees wake up in the morning. They go, ah, I could be doing more with my life with my job.

I have more to offer. 58% of employees are feeling like their bosses don’t really know how to tap into their full potential. 58% of employees are thinking, this is it for me. This is my job. Well, that’s a problem because that means over half of our employees probably aren’t that excited about work because you wouldn’t be right if you fell under utilized. Over half our employees might be edging towards burnout because how do you feel jazzed up for work and excited and at your, at your full kind of sense of wellbeing when you’re underutilized?

And that means over half of our employees are looking for the exits because turnover goes up when we’re feeling underutilized because we think, well, I wanna go somewhere that appreciates me, that recognizes my value. And this is something that if we have low morale and low engagement and high turnover, these challenges that are going getting so much worse right now in the workplace with all of the uncertainty and all of the change and automation and AI and all the things, if we don’t solve this, helping our team members see we get their full value, we’re utilizing you to your fullest.

If we don’t tap into that, then we’re screwed. My friends. That’s why I wanna talk about this on today’s episode. I’m Leah Garvin and this is the New Manager Playbook where I’m on a mission to make managing the easiest part of your job. And it is really freaking hard when your team members look around, they say, nah, you don’t see it. And how do I know that? Because I’ve been there. I’ve been there a lot of times in my corporate history.

I’ve been in roles where, you know, I, I was doing the job and I had, you know, nailed it on that baseline. Then I asked my manager, I said, Hey, you know, I, I wanna take on this new project or this stretch area, or can I, um, you know, help out this team or, or do this. And they’ve said, yeah, you know, we’ll get to it. And because they were busy, they didn’t come back to me and they didn’t give me any extra work.

And I sat there thinking like, okay, like the, the baseline job that, that I already, you know, do in the first two hours of the day. What about the rest? I was hungry to do more work. I was asking for more work. And my manager, they didn’t slow down to, to stop and, and help me figure that out. They didn’t ask me what I was interested in. They didn’t ask me what my goals were. They didn’t get to know me and see, oh, this is really where Leah’s shining and this is really some areas that she could be adding value.

And so I left and every single role that I left when I was in the corporate world and uh, had a lot of different jobs, I’ll tell you that was probably because of this reason, feeling underutilized, feeling undervalued. When you talk to people and you look at low engagement right now, and you look at the high turnover numbers and you ask people like, you know, what’s driving that? Most people will say, I felt like no one cared that I was there.

I felt like there was more out there for me. So if you wanna solve this trillion dollar problem that is plaguing in haunting companies every single day and becomes the biggest pain in the butt for you as a manager at rehiring, if you wanna reduce turnover on your team. You’ve got to dive into this. You’ve gotta figure out how to make your team members feel more, feel more supportive, feel more valued, feel utilized. Now, we don’t wanna feel taken advantage of.

Don’t get me wrong. But like, let’s think about it. You know, I know that when I was working in a design agency years and years ago, I was working in pro, pro project management. So I did the project management across some of the design projects. That meant I would figure out the schedule and the budget and make sure everything was on track. Well, I said to the business owner, I said, you know, I really wanna get involved in more of an operations role because I love looking across the whole studio.

I wanna figure out better processes system wide, and I really know that I could do that well. He said, okay, I’ll think about it. And then he never came back to talk about it, and I wasn’t really sure. I felt uncomfortable. I put myself out there, I wrote this whole proposal and he didn’t say anything, so I kind of felt like, well, maybe he doesn’t think I’m cut out for this. But I sat there and I said, I’m not just a project manager.

I can do so much more. I can get this whole studio like operating on all fire on cylinders, and we can bring in more business, we can have faster turnaround of projects. Our designers don’t have to feel spread so thin. I knew I could do it. And so after a few months, I, I asked him again, I said, Hey, like this is really, I know I can nail this. Can I have a chance? Can I do this?

And he said, eh, like let’s talk about it in a few weeks. And again, he never talked about it. And this is a role. Well, spoiler, I’m not in anymore. But that signal to me. Mm. This isn’t gonna be it for you. This isn’t the job to stay in because your manager, he doesn’t really care that you’ve made this proposal. You’ve shared these ideas. He doesn’t see that you’re being underutilized. He’s okay that you’re being underutilized.

That’s the signal we’re sending our teams. And so I left and it was easy to leave, even though I loved that team. I loved that team culture. I loved the work I was doing because I knew it was never gonna change. Now I know it can be hard to figure out. Well, like, okay, you’re sitting here thinking, how do I know how to utilize all my team members? This is a little bit abstract here. Well. We’ve gotta do the foundational things of being an effective manager.

We’ve gotta have our one-on-one so we understand what makes our team members tick. We’ve gotta have our career conversations, so we make sure that we know what their goals are, where they wanna go. We have to be having effective performance conversations. We have to be giving feedback, recognition, all the foundational things. This is why I talk about all these things in the new manager playbook. This is why I’m launching the New Manager Playbook Program, a complete digital solution for training managers on these foundations so you don’t have to lose your team members to this.

This very simple thing like helping someone feel utilized is not changing everything. It doesn’t mean giving them more projects. It doesn’t mean changing their work. It makes it, it means showing them, I see you, I understand what you’re doing. I’m looking for, for opportunities for you. These are conversations to have. So when we’re missing the foundations of being a great manager because we’re busy, because we’re spread too thin, because we’re overloaded, because of these natural things that that happen to us as managers and leaders, business owners, whatever, we run the risk of having our great talent feel underutilized.

Because I’ll tell you one thing, it’s your 10 Xers. It’s your A players, it’s your superstars. They are the people that feel underutilized. People that are just coasting, they’re stoked, they’re underutilized, right? They’re okay with it. They’re cages chilling and just getting done the basics. Because in roles where, you know, I’ve gotten the job done in two hours a day, I, I wanted to do more. I wanted to fill the time with things. That’s what you 10 Xers wanna do.

They wanna be adding value every minute of the day. So how would you lose that other, if we’re, I know we’re not working on like eight hours a day anymore, and times have changed, but like, let’s just say we were. If you had someone that’s able to get their job done in two hours and they were asking for six more hours of work, well that’s like, you know, adding three more people to your, to your team, right?

If I could do one job in two hours and what could I do in the rest of the six hours? So you are losing productivity, you’re losing output by not listening to your team members when they ask you for more opportunities. When they’re sitting there kind of chilling, like when you see a high performer and they’re like, eh, you know, I’m kind of like, and they don’t look that motivated. It’s a signal. Go back and talk to them, figure out what, what would you be excited about?

It doesn’t mean punishing people with more projects if they’ve gotten things done faster, but at the same time, like, it, it, you know, we, we wanna make sure our team members are utilized. I’m not a, I don’t really subscribe to, you know, if I can get an eight hour job done in two hours, that means like I don’t have to do the rest of it. Like, I think we can kind of optimize ourselves, but also then, then there’s like more capacity there than we’ve under, we’ve under scoped the time it should take, right?

So that’s a balance you want to figure out as a manager, but your team members should never be sitting there thinking to themselves like, does anybody really get that? I could be doing so much more. Because if that person, again, if they’re thinking it, they want to be doing more and they know it’s not gonna happen there, then they’re gonna be leaving. If they see this isn’t, this person doesn’t get it, they’re not gonna let me do that.

They’re not gonna gimme that opportunity. They’re not gonna gimme that chance, then they’re gonna leave. And again, it’s only your, it’s, it’s only your best talent that’s thinking this. Don’t worry. That’s who is thinking this, that is who’s worried. So when we look at, you know, how do we turn this number around? How do we turn around this stat? 58% of employees feel underutilized. Again, it’s going back to the foundations being, having conversations, watching what they’re, you know, Hey, what are, what are they excited about?

What are they? What are they doing really efficiently? What are things that they’re asking to get involved in? Again, it doesn’t mean changing the job overnight, doesn’t mean saying yes to everything, but it’s about having the conversation, getting to know them, slowing down a little bit. This is how we figure out how to utilize someone. And let’s say I said, let’s go back in time. Let’s say I said to that, that creative director and that design firm, he, you know, I, I wanna be director of operations.

I really, really see that this is, this is a path for me. Let’s say he thought I wasn’t ready. He was ignoring it and saying, we’ll talk about it in three weeks. Was, was that the right path? No, it wasn’t the right thing to do in that situation would say, Hey, I love that you are excited about getting involved more studio wide. Let’s build a plan for you getting there. Giving me some projects, some opportunities. This is like utilizing my time.

It’s, it’s giving me this capacity building. It’s showing me he sees that in me. It doesn’t mean he had to say yes right away. It doesn’t mean he had to change my job. If he’s like, oh, well I can’t have you doing ops if I need you on project management, right? But he could show me that he saw that in me, and that’s what we’re talking about here in that conversation to say, okay, come back to me and map out some of the things that you wanna do to get there.

That would take five minutes of his time because he asked me to do the mapping out of it, and it would’ve made me that team member feel like, wow, I have a path here. I have a future here. This person sees something in me. So that is what I’m talking about. These, these shifts, these changes. I, I’m not asking you to spend days and days building a development plan out for your team member and, and sitting down with ’em after every task and saying like, did you like that or not?

Like, no way. I’m saying to listen to your team members to read between the lines to when they propose a new idea. You know, hear them out, talk about what it could look like, ask them to give you a plan, then they’re gonna be more accountable to it anyway. So these are the ways we turn this around. But I’m telling you, it starts with the fundamentals. It starts with the foundations and the new matter playbook. This whole system, the book, the podcast, the keynote, the digital program, all of that is to give you that foundation because without it, you really are just guessing.

And right now, if 58% of of employees feel like they’re underutilized, then all of those 58% of people, those managers, they’re not doing these foundational things. So get the support. I’m so, so excited about this program, the New Manager Playbook program because it’s fully digital, so you can take it any time, and it gives you the foundations of all of the stuff I talk about, where you got the stories, the skills, the practice, the worksheets that you can apply to your team right away.

We really, we don’t have any excuse anymore to not be trying these things and not be understanding, to not be getting the support. So if you wanna bring this to your team, reach out. [email protected]. I am so excited it’s early access right now to bring a demo to you. So send me an email, we’ll get you set up, and this is gonna be the thing that changes this number. This is going to turn around that retention on your team.

This is gonna turn around that engagement, that morale, because when you have these skills, all of this stuff gets easier. So I cannot wait to support you and I can’t wait to see this stat, not look the same next year. I can’t wait to see, not see that. However many, 57% of people leave because of a bad manager. Why? We don’t need it to be this way. So get the support, learn the foundations, and let’s make managing easier, right?

It doesn’t have to feel this hard. All right, see you next time.