Employee Loyalty is your Most Important Resource

Employee loyalty is an umbrella term for a set of emotions that make employees feel attached to their current employer and less likely to see greener grass elsewhere.

Employees are your most valuable assets. They should have the feeling that your organisation wants the best for them, and as a result they will continue to do their best and not look for another job. They are the people that work day in, day out to boost your business and help you to reach your goals, and loyal employees can do absolute wonders for the future of your brand.

I feel that Employees who are not proud of the company they work for, should be released.

Nick,
UI/UX Developer | DevelopForMe

Organisations are highly dependent on employees’ loyalty; it is important for organisational success. In the past there was still a concept of ‘life-time employment’, where employers offered the security of a job in exchange for commitment and loyalty. Today, employers are under pressure from shareholders to perform well and as a result cannot always offer job security. It is not surprising then that some companies are losing around a third of their employee base every year. With numbers like that, employee loyalty can feel like a thing of the past.

Many business leaders are worried about excessive staff turnover, particularly amongst young employees. They see an absence of loyalty in millennials as the cause. Young people have grown up with information on-demand, and connected to apps such as Twitter and Facebook they are constantly informed of new job opportunities by their networks. All businesses will need to hire millennials eventually to keep them going, and when they do it’s crucial that they do whatever they can to engender the kind of loyalty required to retain them.

Also, beyond the pain of hiring replacements, it costs about 20% of an average employee’s salary to replace that employee. There is nothing worse than hiring a new recruit, training them up to excel in what they do, only for them to leave and put their good skills to use for a competing business. If this happened too frequently, your company could essentially become a training ground for your competitors, meaning they don’t have to carry out training procedures, putting you at a huge disadvantage.

Clearly, instilling loyalty in your employees is worth it.

“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”. Richard Branson.

Loyal employees are those who are hired to do a specific job and they will do everything they can to do the best job. Loyal employees not only work hard for their pay, but they are committed to the success of your company. More often than not, they put the company’s interests ahead of their own, but are always striving to improve themselves and their role. 

When you nurture loyalty in the people that work for you, you’ll start to see some incredible benefits for everyone involved. When employees are loyal to their workplace, they will be more willing to invest in their work, innovating new ideas and going the extra mile. Loyal employees are happy employees, after all, and as Forbes reports, happy employees mean “hefty profits”.

The link between employee satisfaction and productivity is long established. Pret a Manger attributed a massive increase in sales to happier employees. Some have attempted to measure the link, with one study finding that happy workers are 12% more productive than their less satisfied counterparts.

A successful company needs employees who are loyal and committed to what it stands for and to what it’s trying to achieve. Businesses should therefore continue to focus on employee loyalty and attempt to increase it.