According to SnapSurveys, “Employee Loyalty” can be defined as:

“Employees who are devoted to the success of their organization and believe that being an employee of this organization is in their best interest.  Not only do they plan to remain with the organization, but they do not actively seek alternative employment opportunities.”

There used to be a time where employee loyalty was one of the biggest concerns for organizations, while it remains in the mix, we now see the importance of employee loyalty increasing in organizations worldwide.

A few reasons we can speculate for this are:

1. Loyal Employees Create Value

The value loyal employees create through their work and effort for the organization is much more compared to the value created by customers. Given a better deal, even the most loyal customer would switch, but such deal negotiations are not as easy to do at the employee level as they are on the customer level.

2. Your Employees Carry Your Brand Image

A major chunk of the Brand’s reputation lies on the employees, not just based on their job satisfaction but also in their work ethic and loyalty. If employees are ready to switch jobs upon being offered, it deteriorates the brand image within the industry as well.

3. Loyal Employees Make Loyal Customers

As mentioned above, loyal customers are still a major concern for organizations, they can only be converted and maintained if they see the reflection of loyalty in the employees they deal with too.

How Is Employee Loyalty Doing In Today’s Times?

According to a survey, In 2020, 35% of employees planned to look for a new job, 33% did not plan on looking for a new job, and 32% remained undecided.

The difference between today’s work culture and that of before is that what used to be considered “employee loyalty” before is now considered “professional stagnation”. If we see an employee who spent 10-15 years in a single company, “What did you do there for so long” is the first question that comes to mind for them. Whereas, an employee spending 10-15 years in a company 20 years ago was considered completely normal.

Although some countries like Japan still see the traditional inference of employee loyalty being practiced, it makes us wonder if remaining loyal to our organization is worth it?

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The main reason why today’s employees change their jobs within shorter periods is for “Career Progression”. If an employee working the same job for 5-7 years doesn’t feel his or her efforts leading into some kind of growth, they would probably extend their search and look to join places where they are provided a stimulus.

Through The Employer’s Lens

In a study conducted by l Walker Information - Next-level XM, CX, and EX Network and Hudson Institute,  the researchers segmented the world’s employee population as follows:

• The Truly Loyal exhibit the kinds of behaviors that make businesses successful — they work hard, stay late, go the extra mile to delight the customer, and recommend the company to their friends as a good place to work.
• The Accessible feel and act as committed as the Truly Loyal, but for reasons unrelated to loyalty, may leave within two years (perhaps a spouse is transferring, or childcare needs intervene).
• Trapped employees want to leave their jobs but for one reason or another feel that they cannot.
• High-Risk employees are spending their working hours clicking through LinkedIn Jobs. Six out of ten High-Risk employees would not recommend their organization as a good place to work and are likely to leave very negative reviews on Glassdoor.

Why Losing Your Best Employees Is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing

Even though no organization would like to see their employees leaving, we must remember that sometimes letting go is the best way to show appreciation. It shows that we provide them the opportunity to learn and develop.

Employees changing jobs not only benefits the employees themselves but also the organizations that they interchange between.

The following are some benefits employers can seek from situations like this:

• Provides them an opportunity to hire new talent from other firms, including competitor firms
• New talent acquired leads to a fresh wave of ideas and innovation, which in the long term reflect positively for the organization
• New employees allow you to stress test your culture and ways of working and point out flaws in the working environment

However, if the turnover of employees starts following a trend, in the long run, there might come a time where they may have no consistent employee who has the company through, which would ultimately lead to a brain drain situation.

This also eventually causes companies additional expenses of hiring,  training new employees, and providing them enough time to perform again and again.

Moreover, if employees consistently keep leaving, a negative morale impact could spread into the workplace.

Conclusion

We live in a different world, the days of spending most of your career in one or two companies are over. People will quit earlier than before so they must become productive faster.

In today’s world, it’s not about how long you can keep an employee, it’s about how fast and how well you can hire, onboard, and empower new joiners while adhering to the best practices in terms of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI).

HRTech is the only way to scale up in this domain but we first need to embrace change and shift our mentality.

Stay tuned to learn more in our next post about how ex-employees can become your best advocates.

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