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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Today's audio blog is on the subject of employee loyalty. I recently had someone say to me that they didn't understand why employee loyalty far outweighed the company's loyalty to the employee. And I thought that was a very interesting thing given that we are in the period of the great resignation, quiet quitting, and all of our other buzz words that we have been discussing.

[00:00:27] And then I was reading an article from People Matters in which they were discussing employee loyalty and how companies define what a loyal employee is and how they should reward them. And at the very top of the article, they say "experts say that commitment and willingness to go the extra mile are critical factors when it comes to rewarding employee loyalty."

[00:00:53] And I think that is a bit of a slippery slope. If what we are saying is that employers only view those employees constantly going the extra mile, which I would translate quite often into staying late, working extra hours, doing more than everyone else.

[00:01:17] And is that really loyalty? And is going the extra mile therefore the definition of loyalty.

[00:01:27] I take a bit of a different look at it from that statement because employee loyalty has to be earned. There has to be a sense of leadership being as invested or more invested in the vision and the success of the company, then those hired to support the vision and mission. Because very often the employees have no say in what the company's vision and mission are, and they certainly don't have any say in the profit margins and the direction that the company wants to go to be profitable.

[00:02:06] So for an employee to demonstrate loyalty to that company they have to first be able to see and understand the vision and the mission. And then I feel that they have to feel like they are part of that vision and mission. Not that it's being forced down on them, but they are an integral wheel in what happens with the success of the company. And that that integral part is not necessarily celebrated, but recognized and appreciated. And yes, if we want to reward employee loyalty then celebrated.

[00:02:54] Because the success of an organization is completely rooted in the success of the employees.

[00:03:01] If you have a vision and a mission of what you want to accomplish in the organization, but those employees feel completely separated from that, they are not only not going to be loyal, but they aren't going to be high-performers.

[00:03:19] So if we look at employee loyalty as a mindset, And we try to align that with today's workplace. Where do we end up?

[00:03:34] It's no longer a matter of someone's tenure or how long they've been at the company to define loyalty.

[00:03:42] It's a new day when employees don't feel like they have to stay somewhere. 30 40 years ago it was very unheard of for people to be jumping from one job to the next in 10 years, much less in one year or two years. Today people use their feet to show their commitment. And if they are not involved in the culture of the organization, that not only won't drive loyalty, it won't drive retention.

[00:04:18] So we hear a lot of companies saying that they're greater problem these days is retaining employees and we talked about that a couple of weeks ago in our statistics about culture.

[00:04:28] So it's not enough to get someone in the door. You have to keep them and you do that through creating a culture where they feel valued. And when someone feels valued, and like they are contributing, then they are going to be loyal. So you cannot expect that just because someone decided to join your company that they're going to be loyal to your cause. That takes time. It takes trust and it takes a culture of inclusion where the employees are part of the whole and there is not an us versus them between leadership and the employees, or even between the board of directors and the senior leadership and the employees.

[00:05:16] So how do we reward employees for loyalty? Maybe the question should be, do we reward employees for loyalty? Or are we rewarding them for something else? Are we rewarding them or should we be rewarding them for being part of the success and sometimes the failures of the organization? For being part of something? For being a contributing member of the whole? Because we have made space for them to contribute and space for them to innovate and therefore space for them to be successful.

[00:05:58] Because if we create that culture, the loyalty will follow. And we don't need the antiquated incentive systems and "oh, if you do really well, you can go take a training course." Those are not the kind of incentives that people are looking for today.

[00:06:17] They're looking at recognition that they are part of the mission and part of the success of the organization because they are bringing their best selves to the problems, creating solutions, generating revenue in a positive way, and helping the organization to meet those goals. They are not doing it because you were giving them a gold watch or a happy hour or an award for employee of the year. They are doing it because they feel like they matter to you and to the organization.

[00:07:05] So that's a lot to think about because things are really shifting. But I think it's something that was always there. It was just that in old school thinking we were focusing on metrics and revenue and bottom line, and that was the judge of someone's value in an organization.

[00:07:27] I'll never forget one time a manager said he was going to put me forward for an award, but he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to justify it, because he didn't have any way to tie my work directly to the company's revenue. Now I was working on a multimillion dollar contract. I was bringing in more work through my experience and the work that I was doing but nobody ever included me in any conversations about what the goals of the company were to determine if what I was doing was even a value.

[00:08:10] I knew that what I was doing was a value to the customer, because the overall program that we were working on was successful. But when he said to me, he didn't know how to justify my worth in terms of dollars that told me everything that I needed to know.

[00:08:33] And I said to him, I can't stop you from putting me forward for an award, but it doesn't sound like something that I actually want. Because to me that was like a slap in the face. You're here working loads of hours, traveling around the world, putting in critical systems, and they couldn't figure out your value or your worth.

[00:08:57] So in today's world, we need to move farther and farther away from that, because worth is not defined by dollars. It's defined by the value that everyone brings to the organization in their own way that helps the organization achieve their mission.

[00:09:18] So hopefully the next time I read an article about employee loyalty, it won't lead with sentences like the one that I read to you before about using the extra mile as the benchmark for someone's loyalty to your company.

[00:09:37] Until next time. I hope you have a great day. Thanks everyone.

Reference Article from People Matters

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INDRA A. BOOKS