Should You Be Loyal to Your Company?

Here is a Harvard Business School’s magazine quote:

“The relationship between employers and employees has undergone a
fundamental shift. Today, workers not only don’t expect to work for
decades on end for the same company, but they don’t want to. They are
largely disillusioned with the very idea of loyalty to organizations.”

This is a very true statement. Ask your colleagues if they are loyal to the company.

The resounding answer I hear is “no.”

Here are some of the reasons people leave companies:

1) Company is not loyal to them. When things get tough for the company, they dump employees, both good and bad to make the bottom-line work.

2) People leaving managers, not the company. Bad managers lose people. Good managers retain people at considerably higher rates than average managers. Mediocre leadership fosters a mediocre work environment, which results in flat corporate performance. Missed revenue expectations leads to lay-offs. Lay-offs = employee disloyalty.

3) Underutilized. Leadership fails to recognize the potential of an employee, employee stagnates, gets frustrated, leaves.

4) Not appreciated. “People will work for money, but will die for appreciation.” This quote is dead-on. Leadership needs to stop using the term “worker-bees.” Employees need to stop referring to themselves as “peons.” Managers must learn to appreciate the people they have working for them. People are what make or break a business, not a brilliant business model.

5) Not respected and/or trusted. I guarantee if managers have their employees respect and trust, they will stick around when the going gets tough.

Besides employees having to work with the fear of job uncertainty, bad management provides plenty of incentive for employees to hop from job to job.