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The New Face of Employee Loyalty

03/20/2019 worklife

Think Long Term and Build Employee Loyalty

 

With employee retention rates declining, maintaining an established, loyal employee base is a concern for employers. In the past, employers could count on an employee’s company lifetime lasting upwards of 10 years. Employees were often seen to work for promotions and achieve great successes within an organization. Recently, however, employee loyalty has been changing.

Nowadays employees are more likely to get pay increases, improved benefits, better work-life balance and greater experience if they move on to greener pastures.

How does your organization stand up to the turnover? Despite millennials job hopping, it doesn’t mean employee loyalty is lost. Let’s take a look at your options.

Make an Advocate out of a Former Employee

First of all, it is as much the responsibility of your organization (if not more) as it is the employee to ensure loyalty. Enhance their experience by providing the skills they need to boost themselves to the next career goal – even if it means departing your company. Keep in mind that their position today, future position’s pay rates and work-life balance play a big part as well.

  • Ensure their management team is skilled and qualified.
  • Encourage networking opportunities that will help them meet others within the organization and the specific industry.
  • Guarantee competitive pay and benefits.

These invaluable resources encourage and compensate for a lifelong employee advocate, someone who will meet younger candidates and tell them about the great experience they had working for you. 

Boomerang Employee

Often times it requires leaving an organization to gain a specific skillset that will boost their career. When they have that skillset and are ready to move on again, they might look back to you for an opportunity to return higher up the ladder.

Hence, employers should work with human resources and recruitment teams to develop career paths that align with this type of employee base. Develop a plan of action to go after those former employees when they have the right experience. Having a former employee come back can pay off big time, especially if that employee showed their willingness to invest in your brand and referred new employees to the organization.

From Employee to Prospect

Many times as employees are building credentials in an industry, there will be a lot of job hopping in the same or a similar industry. Perhaps they can move from colleague to customer for your brand. Don’t let a former employee, who knows how great your products and/or services are, knows the team and has a great rapport with them,  leave and not offer you as a referral.

Freelancing Partners

Many millennials have moved toward a contractual employment lifestyle. This doesn’t work for every company or job type, but there may be an opportunity to utilize this information. But, freelance work comes with pain points – namely that it isn’t the ideal setup for many millennial employees.

This article was inspired by Employee Loyalty Isn’t Dead, It just Looks Different