What stops employees taking their talent elsewhere?

We’ve probably all got at least one customer loyalty card in our wallets. Those of us working in commercial or marketing roles will probably be very familiar with how we measure customer or brand loyalty. Yet, many of us probably have less clear measure of our loyalty as employees. Why is employee loyalty important at all? Put simply:?Loyal employees create loyal customers and that creates value. As Richard Branson has famously been quoted “Take care of your employees and they'll take care of your business”.?

How many of us, however, stop and think about our own loyalty to our employer? What makes us stick where we are and not resign and take our talent elsewhere? What makes for a loyal employee??

What drives loyalty?

Loyalty is an emotional state of mind, and as such is entirely contextual and based on how we think and feel about given inputs at any given time. Loyalty is therefore a precious state that is also fragile, it can take time to build and can be damaged in a flash. What drives our sense of loyalty as employees? I’ve had some difficulty researching this, and couldn’t find an academic research-based analysis so feel free to challenge or add to this in the comments below with your views and insights, but I’ve chosen the following 3As driving our loyalty as employees: Attachment, Assurance and Alignment.

Attachment to the people

One of the key drivers to our loyalty as employees is our emotional bond with the people we work with, the affinity we build with our leaders and team, and the interpersonal interactions we have with them.?Emotional intelligence ?is therefore important to building loyalty. It is often said that people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. The opposite is also true, people stay with their job because they like the people they work with, they enjoy the social interaction with the team, their colleagues, and their manager.

Assurance in the working environment

Over and above the attachment to the people on an interpersonal basis is the sense of assurance and confidence in the way in which they work together. Having a healthy?trust based working environment ?can be make or break when it comes to loyalty. Feeling assured that you can rely and depend on the people you work with and that you can count on them, will add a sense of confidence and workplace loyalty. This depends less on the individual one to one relations but more on the global people?culture of the organisation and how it meets your individual needs . Over and above confidence in the way we work and the organisation's culture, assurance of course can also come from having a safe and comfortable physical workplace, and the ability to work flexibly with hybrid arrangements that meet your personal needs.

Alignment to the organisation’s cause?

The social interactions and culture of the workplace isn’t enough alone, however. Having a clear sense of meaning and purpose in your day to day work will bring a sense of commitment and duty. Loyalty to the employer’s interests forms the basis of many labour laws both in codified and common law legal systems. In many labour laws internationally, employees are expected to exercise good faith with a duty of loyalty towards their employer. Of course, loyalty in the true everyday sense of the term goes well beyond the legal definitions of the contractual employment relationship, and is not something that can be bargained for against salary and employment alone : employee loyalty also relies on a belief in the overall mission and vision of the organisation itself. If you have a strong shared sense of allegiance and alignment to the company’s purpose, you are likely to be more a more loyal employee. Ultimately, if you don’t adhere to the organisation’s values, goals and purpose, then you’re probably best to spread your wings and taking your talent elsewhere. It is important therefore to clearly articulate the organisation’s mission and vision to help employees identify.

Does our personality make us more or less loyal??

Personality is what makes us, us. It sets each of us apart, and our traits and characteristics can be complex and complicated to understand. Using Lewis Goldberg’s Big 5 personality traits (OCEAN) used in personality inventories such as the NEO P-IR, those of us with a high agreeableness are likely to forge greater loyalty as our orientation is on others, and will have greater ease in interacting with others, but there is a potential for loyalty behind each of the traits :?

• Openness to experience :??it could be argued that someone with a lower openness to experience, preferring routine over variety, may be more loyal as less tempted to job hop.?
• Conscientiousness : a high conscientious individual is less likely to be impulsive and more likely to pursue their goals with determination and forethought which can also contribute to their loyalty.?
• Extroversion : an extrovert who gains their energy through interaction with others will probably build loyalty through the relationships and interpersonal relations, whereas an introvert is more thoughtful and reserved and may build their loyalty through reflection on the organisation’s cause.
• Agreeableness : sensitivity to the needs of others in high agreeable individuals will contribute to the attachment element of loyalty.?
• Neuroticism : those with low neuroticism scores are more likely to feel confident and therefore have greater assurance in their working environment.

Regardless of their job, your employees all have?motivational drivers ?that get them out of bed in the morning and push them to achieve their goals. What motivates them is influenced by biological, intellectual, social and emotional factors: motivation is therefore a set of deeply ingrained and intrinsic driving forces that can contribute to the feeling of loyalty, particularly if their personal values and motivation are aligned to those of the organisation.

Can loyalty be a bad thing??

Such is the complexity of human mindsets and behaviours : too much of any good thing can often be a bad thing. In 2015 I certified to use Hogan Assessments, a leading psychometric assessment suite, as we used it for our leadership development programs. This set of tools comprises various different instruments, including the Hogan Development Survey (HDS ) which helps raise self awareness in the derailing dark sides of personality. The tool uses 11 personality scales and 33 sub-scales to help leaders recognise behavioural shortcomings. I personally score a very high risk of derailing on the dutiful scale. This means I am perceived as a good team player, communicating reliably with my hierarchy, behaving obligingly and being eager to please. Clearly however this very high scale of duty, leading to a sense of loyalty to the corporate organisation and the individuals I interact with, can have its risks and downfalls.

During the early days of my career before I moved into HR, I had my first managerial experience headed up the legal team in a small international company. I distinctly recall some of my early scrapes with the potential risks of loyalty as a downside to this high risk of dutifulness.?

The first was in the very early days of managing the team. I was promoted from the team itself and found myself managing my peers. On the first occasion a team member handed in their notice of resignation I reacted like a real idiot, I cringe thinking back to it now. It felt like a betrayal and an affront to my loyalty to the team and the business and as a result I acted negatively. I quickly realised my mistake and have always since then considered resignations as a part of corporate life, a decision people take in a considered and thoughtful way and now make a point in congratulating them and supporting them fully in their final weeks as they prepare to transition to a new role.?

The second was towards the end of my time in the same company some 5 or so years later, and just before I jumped into a full time HR career. I was Head of Legal, Compliance and HR which included doing all the corporate support function stuff the board didn’t want to handle personally. My employer at the time was a market leading overseas property estate agency, financial services and currency brokerage services company. In the 2007-2008 period, as the financial downturn started to take effect, our business models were severely challenged, and revenue streams dried up. I was asked to downsize the headcount and managed three separate waves of redundancies. It was a difficult experience for me on an interpersonal level as I was torn between my personal loyalties to my colleagues of 6 years, and my professional loyalty to my first full time employer. I was accompanying the directors to negotiation meetings with the bank, and then the bank’s administrators, and ultimately in early 2009 appointing a liquidator as we elected to declare insolvency. I worked up to the very last day, at personal expense (I never recovered the full monies owed), out of a sense of loyalty to the business, to what was left of the team and to the hundreds of customers we still served at that time. In hindsight, I had all the information that, thinking rationally and objectively, should have lead me to resigning and finding a new job and yet I stayed. Today, after 13 years working for the same organisation (albeit having changed jobs, employing entities and geographic locations in that time) many could say I’m letting loyalty impede my career development again. For sure, I am regularly contacted through Linkedin by headhunters and I’m confident I have the skills and profile to now be holding a sizeable executive level position elsewhere, and yet I haven’t seriously explored these options, rarely even agreeing to an exploratory exchange.?

So, can loyalty actually hinder your career and professional development? Yes, it can. Thankfully I learnt quickly from the first resignation and managed very differently going forwards, but had I not have done so my behaviour resulting from my sense of loyalty would have lead to a very poor reputation as a manager. As regards my professional mobility, despite my moderate "openness to experience" score on the NEO P-IR, my loyalty has closed a few doors over the years and I’m confident I could have leap-frogged up the career ladder had I displayed less loyalty to my company and been prepared to jump around from one employer to the other.?

Think carefully about what drives your loyalty at work, the people, the environment and the organisation. Think about your personality traits, and which ones contribute to, or detract from, your sense of loyalty, and which of the 3As is most influential. Carefully consider the risks of loyalty, and the opportunities that may pass you by as a result. Ultimately remember that?you are in charge of your own career : if you don’t feel loyal to the people, environment and purpose at your organisation, you’re possibly in the wrong one. If not, then make sure your loyalty is recognised and your manager respects and rewards you for it.?And finally, as a manager-coach, don't assume loyalty from your team, and remember that each of them is an individual and will build loyalty in different ways and for different reasons. It's up to you as manager-coach to identify and foster the right balance of the 3As.

Alan Lambert, Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management, is an International HR leader currently working at the Corporate HR Strategy division of a global energy major?and is a Linkedin Talent Voices Talent Advocate award winner.?