The CEO of a $700 million company uses a simple sentence to turn lazy employees around
- Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn has a strategy for encouraging under-performing employees.
- He told the Financial Times that he just tells them: "What you're doing is really important."
- The technique ties back to the idea that people need to feel like their work has meaning.
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn knows exactly what to do with lazy employees.
The founder of the language learning app - which has been valued at $700 million - recently discussed his strategy for dealing with unengaged employees in an interview with the Financial Times.
"You can turn somebody from being a lazy person to being the most committed person if they honestly believe that the company and you, as a leader, think what they're doing is important," Von Ahn told the Financial Times. "It's amazing how motivating it is to sit with somebody and say 'what you're doing is really important.' I use that a lot."
His technique is backed up by the results of a 2016 survey from LinkedIn and Imperative. The study looked into 26,151 global LinkedIn members to find out how many people "optimize their job to align with work that matters to them." The report found that 73% of purpose-driven employees are satisfied with their jobs, as opposed to 64% of non-purpose-driven employees.
And Von Ahn has indicated that he's on the look-out for purpose-driven individuals. He told the Financial Times that he doesn't believe that waving around massive pay checks will attract top candidates to Duolingo.
"If it requires you paying them off to come work for you, I don't think they're going to be in it," he said. "We prefer missionaries to mercenaries."
Glassdoor has provided a glimpse into pay at Duolingo. The job site's list of average base salaries at the company reported that senior software engineers could earn $110,396, lead designers could make $97,793, and product managers could bring home anywhere from $85,000 to $113,000 a year.
Von Ahn previously told Business Insider that his team vets talent by conducting extensive reference checks, ensuring that prospective employees aren't arrogent jerks, and refusing to hire any doubt-provoking candidates.