I recently received a newsletter from an HR agency here in Cyprus. It goes without saying that I didn’t ask for it. After a quick search through my inbox, I found out that I had sent them my CV about six(!) years ago, to apply for a post they were advertising. Apparently, they thought it’d be a good idea to subscribe all of their past candidates to their newsletter without the candidates’ consent. Truth be told, ever since I started this blog I am being contacted more and more often by all sorts of people, some of them asking for help, others offering services. But at least everyone had been polite until now. It is the first time that someone is trying to approach me in such a bad-mannered, intrusive way.
Anyhow, after visiting their website in an effort to find a way to unsubscribe (it was not included on their newsletter, contrary to legislation) I quickly realized why they were so desperate to gain people’s attention this way. It was because their work was of very low quality, often linking to the work of others (AKA blog spam). I was particularly amused when I noticed among their portfolio of services that they “[…]can increase employee loyalty.” This tells me either of two things about this HR office: Either they are blatantly lying or, they have no idea what they are talking about.
Personally, I do not ever remember an employee declaring loyalty to any employer. There are people who feel too weak (whatever this kind of weakness may be: financial, lack of technical or soft skills, etc.) to try and claim something better than they already have. There are also others who may be good at what they do, but they are not aware of their value to their employer and hence, it doesn’t even cross their minds to leave. And finally, there are also the people who are content with what they are getting for now, but are also always on the lookout for something better.
None of these three aforementioned “classes” of people stay with an employer because they are loyal. And out of these three “classes”, an employer is mostly worried about the third one. If a consultant is to be employed to reduce employee turnover, their main focus would be this third group. And indeed, they may increase retention, but under no circumstances will they be able to increase loyalty. Because at the end of the day, irrespective of an employer’s best intentions, their goals would not be aligned with those of their employees.
Think of it this way: An employer’s game is infinite: There are no win conditions for a company. Once one of the founders leaves the firm, they can leave their stake to their children, who can then take the company from a certain point and grow it further, or even sell their share if they want. An employee’s game, on the other hand, is finite. It is limited by the physical boundary of their own life. Once they go into retirement, the company may continue enjoying the fruits of its previous employee’s labor (through the lingering effect that any well contributing individual leaves behind) but will owe nothing more to its former employee. Thus, an employee’s best interest is to maximize their returns today, and in an age of flatter corporate structures, this means that an employee’s best interest is to behave opportunistically, switching between employers to climb the ladder before it is too late. This doesn’t mean of course, that all employees should be neglecting their jobs, or switching between employers leaving a… trail of destruction behind! So long as you are cashing in a check at the end of the month, it is your ethical responsibility to behave according to the terms of your contract. But on the other hand, this is exactly the source of the problem at the end of the day: That doing so doesn’t give you a motivation to provide that something extra.
Loyalty is too big a word, that is used way too loosely in our days. I am not entirely sure if true loyalty exists in the corporate world, but I know this: There is only one thing that can generate at least some degree of loyalty from employees and that thing, is called “ESOs”.