Productivity Hacks

Employee Loyalty and How it can Benefit Your Business!

Building Teamwork & Employee Loyalty

Employee loyalty is very important in today’s market. Employers are competing against each other to find the best employees, and employees are wanting to work for the best employers. How do you go about creating and maintaining employee loyalty with your business? How will your business benefit from employee loyalty?

First, let’s examine how your business will benefit from employee loyalty. Loy employees benefit your business because that is less money you have to spend on searching for and training new employees. Also, loyal employees are more likely to stick up for your business if someone says something negative about it or recommend your business to their friends, family, and others they know.

For example, say you own a roofing company. If a friend of your employee’s mentions that his roof is beginning to leak, a loyal employee will automatically recommend their workplace. However, an employee who is not loyal to the company may say something such as “Whatever you do, don’t use my company. My boss is mean, you shouldn’t support him”. Such negative comments from employees can do a lot to damage your company’s reputation.

So, how do you go about earning employee loyalty? The first step is to make sure your employees are happy. Happy employees are loyal and productive employees. Think to yourself what might make your employees happy, or take the time to conduct a short survey of your employees about what would make them happy. Then, try to fulfill the wishes of your employees as best as possible.

For example, say your employees would like health benefits. If you can afford to offer your employees health benefits, you should give them health benefits. However, say your employees feel they are making too little money and want a raise, yet you can’t afford to give them a raise. In a situation like this, you may want to brainstorm a little and come up with another solution that could make the employees happy. For example, instead of giving everybody in the company fifteen cent an hour raises, you may want to give everyone a one time, fifty dollar bonus for being loyal employees. Then tell your employees that you enjoy giving them rewards when they are loyal.

Some companies are coming up with more creative ways to keep employees loyal. For example, Google is reported to have given their employees the benefit of washing machines. Other companies have given away things like free basketball game tickets. You may want to think of a unique and memorable way of your own to increase employee loyalty.

However, note that employee loyalty needs to be maintained. You cannot just give an employee a gift once and expect them to be thankful forever. Making your employees happy is something that should constantly occupy a place in your mind. Even if raises and bonuses aren’t always feasible, is morale running low again, perhaps it could be time for an office pizza party.

One more way to create and maintain employee loyalty is to get to know your employees on a more personal level. Of course, a professional attitude must always be maintained when dealing with employees, however, knowing everyone’s first name and a bit about their lives makes employees feel more like valued people instead of just nameless workers. When employees feel values, they are happy, and when employees are happy, they are loyal.

Some links you might enjoy on this topic are:

Fortune magazines “100 Best Companies to Work for 2009”

25 Ways to Reward Employees (Without Spending a Dime)

Metlife’s “8th Annual Study of Employee Benefits Trends”

Another technique to increase employee loyalty is on how to “Energize Your Employees and Raise Their Morale!”