As I’ve written so much about building a Perfect Team, it seems logical to discuss what would sustain this team long enough to produce meaningful results. Naturally, it all revolves around the concept of Employee’s Loyalty.
I haven’t seen any direct mentioning of loyalty in employee’s contracts and, not living in Japan, never witnessed a ceremony of employees giving loyalty oath to their new company. Nevertheless, being loyal to a company is a notion companies are clearly aware of, while desperately trying to weigh it, measure it and obsessively applying the findings to get the needed employees to stay.
At first glance it would appear that Employee’s Loyalty is an obvious and straightforward concept, though when you come to think of it a little more, it becomes not as easy to define as initially seemed.
To some people it simply means to stay at one workplace for a long period of time, to others, regardless of the tenure, it could be not surfing the Internet in the working hours, or being confidential and not disclosing company secrets. Taking it to a different level, some will argue that loyal employees embrace company’s values as their own, tying their own interests to those of the company they work for.
I bet you could add to these definitions numerous others that would stress different applications of loyalty to the working environment depending on the circumstances. One could state that Employee’s Loyalty varies from generation to generation and could be affected by differences between cultures and belief systems of both employees and organizations. I think that regardless of these controversies, the concept of Employee’s Loyalty could be and should be utilized in your management practice.
In the next posts I’ll review how Employee’s Loyalty could be meaningfully defined and understood, what drives it and how a manager should behave in order to keep the Perfect Team that was built with so much effort.
A Perfect team is like a perfect body
AnyaWorkSmart 
Anya, you bring up a valid point and a great topic today, but it is sad to say, that it is a dying quality too, among lower to mid-management in SMB, fewer and fewer individuals are entrenching themselves into one company, like previous generations did or the Japaneses. Both companies and senior company management from the top-bottom should incorperate a paradigm change in develop a career path that fosters success is needed for each and every employee and a true mentorship program, not something that is just superficial and looks good on paper, but a true matrix of success, an earn value comparison. I previously worked for General Dynamic IT division and the pay was not the greatest, but the benefit package was outstanding. They believed, that their employees were the greatest resource within the company and a majority of positions were filled by internal employees, due to education company’s education program and practical training to match the new skill sets. This is what fosters loyalty between employer and employee.
Sean, thank you for your deep thoughts. “path that fosters success is needed for each and every employee and a true mentorship program” absolutely loved it!
I agree that it is a very challenging topic. Truly working model in organization has to involve a profound reflection of motivational factors and interrelations of generations. You are absolutely right that today’s generation is different, but as a matter of fact there are still ways to approach this hurdle. There are only so many types of generations, and they are coming back in cycles (a small pry into solutions I have written my next posts on the topic). As every work space always comprise a number of generations, clashes are inevitable. Unfortunately, today majority of the so called career path systems are far from being effective due to failure to map truthfully the needs of employees and organization.