Improve Employee Loyalty with these 5 Easy Steps

What is Employee Loyalty?

Employee loyalty is thought of as a generic term. But its actually a really important workplace concept, which organizations need to make sure they are doing the best they can to increase employee loyalty in the workplace. Employee loyalty can be defined as the extent to which employees are devoted to an organization. The extent to which they are devoted to an organization and believe that staying at the organization is in their best interest.

Further, they are not actively seeking other employment. Employee loyalty is about reciprocity. Reciprocity between an employee and the employer. Wherein the employee feels wanted by the organization and in return continues to work to their best and is not seeking other work. Employee loyalty is a spectrum. From active disloyalty to active loyalty.

Why is Employee Loyalty Important?

Maybe you are asking yourself why employee loyalty is important? Should you hope to boost loyalty organically? Or do you need to actively look at how you improve employee engagement? Employee loyalty is super important, here’s why?

• Loyal employees contribute the most to your productivity levels.
• Value creation
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Organizational Success
• Customer Loyalty
• Greater Employee Retention
• More engaged employees

5 Steps to Improve Employee Loyalty

We know that making employee loyalty strategy work can be tough. So we’ve got some top tips to help you out;

Invest in Progression, Education, and Training

One of the best ways to show employees you care about them is to invest in them. Invest in their progression by investing in education and training courses for them to enroll on. Provide education and training so that you show them you care about their development. Perhaps stagger your training so with greater experience you can do harder training courses. Or alternatively, make more challenging courses optional.

A little caveat, before investing in additional training, make sure you provide necessary training. A sure-fire way not to get loyal employees is to have no training at all. So, include the basics. What does the role mean? What equipment and systems training will be needed.

Promote Internally

Hiring staff internally gives staff a clear message. You want them to progress and lead this company. Promoting internally will show your employees a clear career progression. It will show to them that you care and appreciate their work, and that you want them to succeed. Further, it shows that their hard work and loyalty is recognized and rewarded. This isn’t to say that external candidates shouldn’t be considered. Some positions will require external candidates. Consider having an unwritten policy of internal promotion in order to improve employee loyalty.

Co-create your strategy

Your employee loyalty strategy shouldn’t be top-down. It shouldn’t be thought up and implemented purely by management and senior leaders. Your strategy should be vertically integrated. Using people from all around the organization and should have a heavy employee focus. Who knows what employees most want in order to become more loyal? The employees.

Organizations that have a better understanding of what their employees want have the best chance of supporting them and making them feel wanted. Think about the things which will feed into loyalty. Goals, development, career progression, appreciation.

Open communication and feedback channels

Create healthy communication and feedback channels with your employees. This is essential to the success of manager-employee relationships in the workplace. Try and make communication more open. Managers should meet with employees frequently to discuss development, satisfaction, goals, etc.

As a manager, you will be able to identify key areas for development or issues that need addressing. Gallup research indicates that managers who invest time with their employees in order to build trust and positive relationships contribute 48% higher profits to companies.

Control

So much to fit in this topic. What does control mean for loyalty? Let’s start with micro-management. Micro-management is the embodiment of overbearing control. The employee has no authority or scope for maneuverability in their work. Part of gaining employee loyalty is employee trust. Showing them that you trust them to do their work is necessary to gain loyalty. On the other end of the spectrum is employee empowerment.

Employee empowerment is a sure-fire way to gain employee loyalty. It means giving employees a degree of autonomy, responsibility, and freedom to do their work. It is essentially ‘handing over the reins’ to the employee.

Employee loyalty is essential to the success of any organization. Consider implementing these steps into your strategy to make yours a success.