Employee Loyalty- 3 Things to Understand & How to Improve It

Employee loyalty is one of the most desirable traits in the workforce, and it shows genuine love and support for the organization and helps reduce attrition. The sense of reliability that a company can count on its employees to support them goes a long way in achieving success.

Employee loyalty is even more important now than ever before. With the current uncertain business environment, employers need loyal employees to help them grow together.

Loyalty in these tough times builds the much needed assurance that helps one survive. Especially where businesses are now more vulnerable than ever, and they need not only competent employees but also loyal individuals as well.

Employee loyalty also helps adapt to new changes and form better team dynamics. For these reasons, the commitment of individuals in the workplace is a must.

But, like every side of the business, it is not easy to incorporate. To maximize loyalty in the workplace, leaders must understand their aspects. So, here are the points to get you up to speed.

Employee Loyalty- 3 Things to Understand for Employers

1. A time-consuming process

Like every business relationship, loyalty takes time as well. You cannot expect your employees' commitment from the get-go, and it gets cultivated over time by how a company behaves with the employee. Employers must be patient in this regard.

As leaders, you must portray your trust and dedication to the employee first. It is plausible that your employee may have had some bad experiences with company loyalty before. Here, you must show support, understand their perspective, and proceed.

2. Reasons for loyalty and disloyalty

Many reasons add up to loyalty and disloyalty. As employers, it is important not to jump to conclusions immediately. These can be job dissatisfaction, improper company culture, troubling relations with managers, etc.

You must sit down with employees concerned and get to know their problems. Only after the said discussions must you conclude and take action.

Also, only because a person leaves a company does not mean disloyalty on their part. There can be many reasons for employee attrition, and these can be a passion, personal commitments, personal dreams, long-term plans, etc.

Judging a person's decision to leave a company on disloyalty is incorrect. In times like these, you must talk and understand that individual's perspective. If the employee does leave, then you must be professional.

You should wish them luck and be available for any help they need. Furthermore, let your exiting employees know that your door is always open if they want to rejoin.

3. Disloyalty isn’t infectious

Disloyalty is not an infection that spreads from one employee to another, and a loyal employee's sincerity is not affected by an instant. Sometimes, employers doubt all their workers because of one disloyal act by an employee.

Such actions show unprofessionalism on the employer's part. Furthermore, it harms the working environment and may alter your loyal employees. It is crucial to stay calm and not judge the whole staff.

These are 3 of the crucial points employers must keep in mind for employee loyalty.

Now, let's look at how you can improve employees' loyalty.

How to Improve Employee Loyalty in the Workplace

1. Competitive and Appropriate Compensation Plan

An attractive package never ceases to amaze employees. To gain the loyalty of your employees, you must offer them competitive compensation, and it means providing a salary per the market conditions with perks and benefits.

Also, regular employee promotion increments are vital as well, and it shows a company's commitment to its workers, which helps build employee loyalty.

2. Hiring through Referrals

One way to increase employee loyalty is to build a friendly working environment where workers are loyal to each other. In this, hiring through referrals goes a long way. So, you must have employee referral programs.

Data published in Medium show that employee retention is 45% in hires made through referrals than 20% compared to other sources. This higher retention shows employee loyalty. Also, it costs and takes less time to hire through referrals, and it is for these reasons you must hire through referrals.

3. Control to the Employees

Give more control to the employees for their work. You must give your workers the authority and flexibility to make decisions, be creative in their problem-solving approach, flexible timing in remote workers with good work from home setup assistance, etc.

These actions increase employee turnover and help with employee satisfaction. Hence are vital for employee loyalty.

4. Transparency

Working in an uncertain environment creates stress in an office. So, employers must encourage a predictable working environment and follow transparency. It would help if you alerted the employees of your actions and decisions here.

It is also vital to let the workers know about new changes in advance.

5. Public Recognition and Appreciation

Rewards and recognition are vital for making employees feel appreciated and motivating them to work harder. This appreciation builds employee engagement, which adds to employee loyalty factors for top talents.

6. No Micromanagement

Micromanagement is a sign of a lack of trust within the organization, and it shows your employees that you don't trust them enough to do their work. There must be faith in both parties to build a sound employer-employee relationship.

By micromanaging, you are also diminishing employee empowerment and job satisfaction levels. Avoiding this nosy practice will build trust and foster employee loyalty.

These are a few of the points that will help you go the extra mile towards gaining the loyalty of your employees.

Now, it is also essential to assess how your efforts for employee loyalty are doing. After everything gets over, how do you know if you have loyal employees in your office? Here are a few pointers that should help you with this issue.

Signs of a Loyal Employee in the Workplace

The following are the signs of a loyal employee in the workplace. Loyal employees:

• Tell you whenever you're wrong instead of keeping silent
• Treat you more like a person they admire rather than a boss they report to
• Will never show their criticism for your actions in front of the team
• Will let their difference of opinion known to you in private
• Show support for your work in public
• Inform well before they intend to leave

These are some of the signs of loyal employees you must look out for in your office.

Conclusion

Employee Loyalty is a vital sign of employee engagement, and it shows businesses that there are employees who love the company. So, as employers, you must do everything to ensure this quality in your workforce.

Leaders must understand that while competence is trainable, loyalty is not, and it only cultivates over time. So, put in your best efforts and be patient. Soon enough, you'll have a bunch of loyal employees willing to grow together with you.

This article is written by Jyoti Prakash Barman. He is an in-house Content Marketer at Vantage Circle with interests in music and automobiles. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com