Employee Loyalty 2.0: Future trends for building and maintaining employee loyalty

In the first instalment of our Employee Loyalty blog, we talked about a visible shift in focus for organisations: moving away from maintaining employee loyalty in more of the traditional sense, towards increasing employee engagement. We concluded that employee loyalty is not dead, but it has changed. In this blog instalment, we look to Employee Loyalty 2.0 and explore how we believe it will develop over the next two years. 

To do this, we'll first consider key future trends which are expected to span both the customer and employee landscape over the next 24 months. And seeing as we've just had Oscars weekend, we're going to look to the winner of night, Leonardo DiCaprio, to help us describe three of these trends. Bear with me…. 

Trend 1: Total immersion  

Frank Abagnale Jr, the lovable rogue from Catch Me If You Can didn't do anything half-heartedly. Whether he was pretending to be a doctor, a pilot or a legal prosecutor he totally immersed himself in the life he created. 

Total immersion is a theme we've already started to see in the workplace. Employees are constantly 'on' and the concept of 9-5 working hours is a distant memory. According to a recent McKinsey report, 80% of people interviewed sleep with their phone in the bedroom and over half of them check their email in bed. 

What does this mean for employee loyalty? It means employers have constant access to their employees via a number of channels. This is a huge opportunity to engage with employees in a more personal and targeted way. No more mass emails or formal one-to-ones - build loyalty by building a connection with your employees through one of the many platforms they use daily. 

Trend 2: Emotional connection 

Romeo & Juliet, a modern twist on Shakespeare's great love story depicting the deep, emotional connection between Leo and his leading lady Claire Danes.  

For this trend, we need to consider recent consumer behaviour research. It's well known that several emotional motivators such as 'feeling a sense of belonging' or 'protecting the environment' influence our behaviour as consumers and this is no different to our behaviour as employees. We are driven by a need for emotional connections and employers need to work out how to provide this in the workplace. Just like appealing to emotional motivators influences our brand loyalty as consumers, it will influence our loyalty as employees. 

Trend 3: Blurring the line between work and personal life 

I am definitely not condoning any of Jordan Belfort's behaviour in Wolf of Wall Street - except for flying a helicopter home from dinner, I'd quite like to do that - but he did know a thing or two about blurring the lines between work and play. 

The lines between work and personal life are becoming so blurred that soon there will be no need for work-life balance, the two will be one and the same. Providing a creative, fun and stimulating environment for your people will be key for maintaining employee loyalty in the foreseeable future. 

Employees want to have a good time and enjoy where they spend an average of 90,000 hours of their life. This is why, at Slalom London, we have a fully stocked beer and wine fridge and an on-going ‘ideas to have even more fun in the office’ initiative. It's the little things that count - we all work really hard, so let's have fun doing it. 

And the Oscar for most tenuous links in a blog goes to… 

So there we have it - our predictions for Employee Loyalty 2.0. Do you agree? Have we got them right? We'd love to hear your suggestions for maintaining employee loyalty, please post them here or contact us at [email protected]. 

A special thanks goes to Leo for the creative inspiration. Congratulations on your win, fifth time's a charm.