126. What makes employees loyal to a company?

Transcript – Episode 126: What makes employees loyal to a company?

Episode 126: What makes employees loyal to a company?

Joe: Guess what? Employee loyalty has almost nothing to do with paychecks or perks.

Joe: Welcome to the Boss Better Now podcast sponsored by Boss Hero School, where we teach leaders and business owners how to activate employee commitment in today’s ever-changing workplace. So, of course, you want employee loyalty. We know that it brings with it a ton of benefits. Employalty leads to lower turnover, higher engagement, and longer tenured employees. We know that those employees become your best recruiters. They deliver the highest level of customer service. And when all of those things are happening, every metric you care about in your organization is positively impacted. Quality, safety, reputation, revenue, all of it. But what does loyalty even mean? The concept is really about being a faithful and devoted contributor even in the face of hard times or missteps. If you think about it, true loyalty overrides the natural acts and thoughts of self-preservation that kick in from time to time. If you’ve ever worked at a place where things took a turn for the worse, often people start looking around and saying, “I’ve got to get out of here. This place is a hot mess. I’m jumping ship.” But real loyalty weathers those storms, and it can take years to earn as well. But it’s a beautiful thing to watch happen. If you truly get loyalty, you end up with legacy employees where being a part of your organization isn’t just important to them, but it becomes a part of their identity. So where does it come from? I would argue that there are three sets of experiences that dramatically increase the likelihood that the people on your teams will become loyal employees. The first is a sense of purpose. Do I see an impact in my work? Do I believe that it matters? Do I believe that it’s making a difference? Am I a valued contributing member of this team? But that alone isn’t enough because if I start to believe that that impact is important and I start to believe that I can still have that impact in other places then loyalty from that employee will become elusive. But when I start to believe that working here that working for you is the very best way or it’s the very best place for me to have that kind of impact. Well, then that creates a kind of unique synergy between that employee who wants to make a difference, who wants to have that impact and you as the perfect best vehicle for them to be able to continue doing that at a high level. And this doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s the belief that I work for the best landscaping company in the region because when I drive around, I see all the beautiful homes that I have played a part in contributing to. Or it’s the woman I met in the Midwest a couple of weeks ago when I was keynoting at a conference who told me a beautiful story about how she has worked for supply chain in her organization for 30 years and sees herself in every single patient visit that takes place when a doctor or nurse reaches for a gauze pad, reaches for a tongue depressor, a tongue depressor. She says that is that is a visit that is taking place that I am directly connected to and I love the idea that I can have that kind of a positive impact on my community at so many different times in so many different places. When you can nurture that sense of purpose and when people come to believe that working for you is the best way to deliver that impact you see loyalty increase. The second factor that influences employee loyalty is the employee perception of the character of the company. Do I believe as an employee that my company, my employer stands for something more than just profit? The truth is most of us and we and we see this especially as we encounter younger and younger generations in the workforce, we want to believe that we’re doing something positive. We want to believe that the people we’re working for, that the company on the whole is there to do something positive for people or for a cause or for a community. And so, the question becomes, what are your company’s core values? And how do they show up again and again and again? Are they showing up as something that people really believe and advocate for and bring to life in service to people or in service to a cause or community? or are they just lip service? I mean, you can say you have a deep and abiding commitment to customer service, but if you’re looking at ways to short-circuit that customer service experience, or if you’re constantly bad-mouthing customers behind the scenes, then you don’t really have a deep conviction and commitment to customer service. And so, the character of the company matters here a great deal. It’s the accounting firm that doesn’t overcharge its clients in some spots where maybe it could. It’s the chain of stores that stands by its convictions even in the face of changing political headwinds. The truth is that people will work harder for and stay longer at places that they believe have integrity. And guess what? Companies aren’t people. Do we believe that companies can have integrity? Well, the integrity comes from the people who are leading those companies and how they talk about the work of that company. And so, the question we should be asking as business owners and as leaders is what are our core values as an organization? How are we living them? And how do our employees consistently experience them? And finally, friends, if you really want to ratchet up employee loyalty, a key ingredient is the belief that my company cares about me. I often end my employee keynote by asking the people in the audience, what matters most to you in your life, what is most important to you? And the answers I get back are always the same. People say, my family, my health, stability, my faith. Nobody says anything that’s on their to-do list. And that’s because what’s most important to us really doesn’t have a lot to do with work. That doesn’t mean our work isn’t important, but our work is a means to an end. Our work is how we provide for and take care of the things that are most important to us. And what I know is that if working for you negatively impacts what matters most to the people working for you, you really have no shot at earning their loyalty. But here’s the other thing that I know. If working for your company positively impacts what matters most to me, well, man, you might have cracked the code for employee loyalty. The truth is that employees get messages every single day from their employer, “My company cares about me.” Or they get messages every day that say, “My company does not care about me.” These kinds of messages show up in so many different ways. It’s the CEO who is quoted in the news as saying, “We don’t believe in work life balance. If you want to work for us, we expect 60, 70 hours a week.” That sends a message loud and clear that we do not care about people. It’s the company that demands a return to office without ever talking to the employees that they promised could work from home when they relocated. It’s the message that is sent to employees when their benefits are cut or when we promote hustle culture. If the interactions we have with employees are entirely transactional, if they leverage human capital instead of thinking about real people, employ uh loyalty will never bloom. This is why you will not see loyalty forming at companies or in organizations that constantly cut hours or engage in layoffs with every feast or famine revenue cycle. But there are some places that send messages to their employees every day loud and clear that you do care about me. That happens when those employers consistently make choices that are in the best interests of people first. It’s the manufacturing plant I read about last year in the Deep South who figured out that much of their workforce was way behind on their retirement savings. And this was an aging workforce. What did they do? They made an immediate and significant one-time contribution to the retirement accounts of all of their employees. And then they beefed up their regular employee match so that they could help these folks get caught up. And when they got news coverage about this, the interviews with the employees were startling. Nobody was surprised. Of course, they were they were grateful. They talked about the generosity, but they said, “That’s how this company operates. They care about us. They take care of us. I will never work anywhere else. I keynoted the leadership meeting for a rural health care system recently and one of the things that they had figured out was that one of the biggest challenges facing a large number of their employees was access to childcare. And when I went there to keynote this leadership meeting, it was right around the same time that they had just finished funding and launching a community initiative to expand preschool and afterschool care with other providers in the community. The truth is if you want faithful and devoted employees, you have to show up in a way as an employer that is faithful and devoted to them. You have to operate not as if your people are a commodity to be leveraged, but they have lives outside of work. And when you do that, when you minimize the suffering that they experience outside of work as a result of working for you, employee or loyalty skyrockets. I keep saying Employalty because it’s the shorthand title of my book. And that’s worth mentioning because employee the title of that book is not a mashup of the words employer loyalty and humanity. It’s a Port Manto of the words employer loyalty and humanity. Employee loyalty is an outcome of employer loyalty and humanity. Employalty therefore is the commitment that employers make to a more humane employee experience because that’s what activates commitment at work. So, there you have it. If you want more employee loyalty, focus on that sense of purpose. Do the work around the character of the company and your core values and make sure you’re consistently operating in a way that leads employees to believe my company cares about me. I would love to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment in the box below the video here on YouTube or you can send me an email at bossbetternow@gmail.com. That’s also how you can tell me about a question you’d like to see me answer on a future episode of our show. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: It’s rooms like this one where when we gather together for a couple of days at a time to really understand what it takes to activate employee commitment in the workplace that leaders experience profound transformation. If you’ve been wondering how to take your leadership knowledge and skills to the next level, if you want to go deeper on what it takes to be successful at leading people in today’s ever-changing workplace, then you should check out Boss Hero School. Over 3 days, I’m going to teach you both the methods and the mindset for activating employee commitment in the workplace. This is not a theory. We are getting into the weeds. We are upleveling your skills. We are giving you scripts. We are giving you blueprints and frameworks that you can take back to your workplaces to meet people where they are and propel them forward doing whatever it is you’re asking them to do on the job. For more information, visit bossheroschool.com.