Job Loyalty Is Dead, And It’s Better That Way

I was in the middle of eating my chicken sandwich when our conversation turned to his employees. The gentleman I was having lunch with, a high level manager at a moderate-sized company began to give me his two cents about loyalty today.

He was frustrated. One of his employees just put in their two-week notice after 14 months in the job. It was his third employee in the last year to quit after less than two years with the company.

“No one has any loyalty anymore today. It’s not how it used to be. People were loyal to a company, at least for 5 or 10 years before moving on. Now when the first outside opportunity anyone gets they take it and leave. There is no patience for internal progress. It’s frustrating.”

In a way, I agree. Things have changed in the workplace, and loyalty is one of them. But I think we are better off because of it.

My follow up question left him a bit surprised.

“What reason did you give them to stay? How did the company show them loyalty?”

He thought on it for a minute and said that the company provided them a paycheck, benefits, and a potential to grow within the organization. Again, my response caught him off guard.

“So does every other company out there. What did you do beyond that to create loyalty?” This brought a couple meandering sentences with few actual answers. It brings us to why loyalty is dead: no one truly offers it anymore.

There was a time around World War II that the traditional idea of company loyalty was born: you got hired by a company and they would keep you employed (given good behavior) for your career, and in return for 40 years of service you’d receive a nice gold watch and a pension.

Those days don’t exist anymore. Only a fraction of employment opportunities offer pensions, and most of those are government related. Most pensions that are still out there are in jeopardy of collapsing under the obligations they owe. On top of that, companies are quick to fire their people when quarterly earnings fall short or a re-org takes place. This is absolutely their right to do so, especially when times get tough.

But here is the rub: when a company’s first reaction to a bad quarterly earnings announcement is to cut the workforce by 5–10%, how can you ever expect an employee to be loyal?

If you look at your employees like commodities, then you cannot be surprised when they look at your company the same way.

We live in a world of almost record low unemployment. People talk about the ‘war for talent’ and the lengths companies will go to find and hire great talent. This also means great employees have options. To blindly expect your high performing talent will be loyal today just because you provide them a paycheck is delusional at best.

On top of that, we’ve created a system that rewards people who move. In fact, research shows that those who stay in one job for 10 years will end up earning on average 50% less than someone who changes their job every two years over that same 10-year timespan. That market has incentivized employees to leave often.

We need to begin to shift how we think about loyalty in the context of our world today. We cannot be nostalgic and apply the old lenses of what loyalty used to mean, hoping those times come back. We can’t expect loyalty when companies offer very few of the old incentives that they used to create it.

We need to understand that in today’s world, loyalty must be a two-way street. We need to realize that loyalty must be earned, not given. We need to understand that loyalty is no longer built on a dollar amount, but an emotional feeling and connection between the company and employee. We must also accept that no one stays in one job forever anymore. But if the industry average is 3 years in a job, how do you get your employees to stay 4 or 5? That small change would reap incredible rewards to your bottom line.

As the old ideas of loyalty fade from our world, I believe we will be better because of it. It will allow new ideas to foster within our organizations to drive engagement. It will force us to build authentic relationships within our organizations. It will require work and intentionality, and will make the conversation become a two-way street. It will force companies to build loyalty not through a dollar amount, but through the intangibles of their cultures.

Company loyalty as we used to know it is gone, but in its place we have an opportunity to create something even better. The question is: are we up for the challenge?

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, give it a clap or share it with someone you think may enjoy it. Disagree or have further thoughts? I’d love to hear them.