In today’s business world, loyalty is a powerful concept. Decades ago, employees would stay at their jobs and build a career. But times have changed, and many employees don’t consider loyalty to an employer as being important.
Loyalty in a business setting is basically the relationship between an employer and an employee – an abstract, often unwritten contract in which the employer agrees to provide the resources for an employee to get the job done, matched by the employee’s agreement to work at an optimal level to fulfil the goals of the company. Loyalty is the glue that ties an employee to their job, and that tie is a function of the allegiance entrepreneurs attempt to develop in their employees. Loyalty is a key reason many employees remain at a job.
But when either party fails in their role, the contract that’s hard to build in the first place gets broken. And it’s difficult to rebuild that trust.
Why are loyal employees so critical to the success of your business? Loyal staff create a culture of stability; people who have been around a while know “how it’s done around here”. Loyalty reduces costly turnover rates by eliminating the time needed to recruit and train new hires. Loyal employees are usually satisfied, productive employees.
Developing Loyal Employees
Stephen Robbins, author of Organizational Behavior, offers several ideas in his book. Fundamentally, it’s all about you – how you behave, how you treat your employees, how you perform as a manager. It comes down to your staff’s interactions with you because you are the company, and if they like and respect you, chances are, you will have loyal employees.
Firstly, you need to prove that you have what it takes to get the job done – you must be competent as a worker and a leader, or you’ll get no respect. If an issue arises in which you don’t have the skills to develop a solution, be honest about your lack of ability and seek input from others. If you make excuses or blame others for the problem, loyalty will suffer.
When false blame or a denial occurs, employees quickly lose respect for their leader, and loyalty decreases. Loyal employees trust that their boss will be honest in their interactions and will take the moral high ground, especially in difficult situations.
Behave consistently with staff. This shows that you’re reliable and predictable, and that you use good judgement. Workers won’t respect a leader on whom they can’t rely or whose judgement is flawed.
Next, be willing to protect your employees and help them save face. Never embarrass an employee. You’ll be seen as the “bad guy” and the embarrassed employee as the martyr.
This isn’t to say that you can’t reprimand or correct an employee’s behaviour. On the contrary, not doing so will lead other employees to believe that you have no standards, and they’ll lose respect for you. When an employee has made a mistake, correct the errant behaviour in a manner that doesn’t demean the employee, but helps them learn what the problem was and how to correct it in future.
Better yet, the boss who helps their employee identify the issue before it becomes a problem will gain that employee’s respect and loyalty.
Finally, be as open with your employees as possible. Do you easily share ideas, or do you withhold key data from them? Clearly, some information needs to be withheld from employees due to its sensitive nature. But short of that, entrepreneurs who openly share appropriate information that enables their employees to work productively will be seen as trustworthy bosses who deserve staff loyalty.