In America

Where’s the love? Employee loyalty continues to diminish

Let’s face it. The once closely knit relationship between employers and employees has come unraveled in recent years. As a workforce that once prided itself on its longstanding virtues of hard work, perseverance, and loyalty, employees throughout the United States have now become more focused on personal goals, rather than corporate objectives.

American workers have a greater sense of independence and a desire to not only make money, but to utilize their talents to change the world – and they simply no longer feel the need to stay with one company on a long-term basis in order to do achieve their fiscal and personal dreams.

So what happened? Why has employee loyalty contracted to the point in which it is now nearly extinct within a majority of the nation’s companies?

To seek answers to such questions, Lee Hecht Harrison conducted an online poll which focused solely on employee loyalty. According to poll results, the lack of faithfulness tends to boil down to one major issue – employees no longer feel “loved” by their employers.

The poll found that 50 percent of respondents believe they are not treated fairly by their employers.
They are being overworked, underpaid, and are receiving less incentives for their efforts than they ever have before. And they have had enough.

As a result, they are searching for new employment opportunities with other organizations – and even with their current companies’ competitors! Many are even considering the prospects of working in a completely independent fashion altogether and using the training and experience they have received within their present companies to transform their dreams of entrepreneurship into reality, despite the uncertainty of the global economy.

But how did employee loyalty suddenly become an “old wives’ tale”? What led such a faithful American workforce to become anything but?

Many believe the endangerment of employee loyalty was set off by a string of events that began just five years ago – the Great Recession.

During that period of time, stocks fell to near all-time lows. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac almost collapsed. Two of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers – General Motors and Ford – nearly shut down their operations. And employment began to deplete to levels that had not been witnessed since the early 1980s.

Companies panicked. Budgets were slashed. And organizations were forced to implement initiatives in order to cut costs as much as possible.

Soon enough, many companies terminated corporate outings, out-of-state and out-of-country business meetings, and various events that bonded employees and expanded their capabilities to collaborate effectively as team units.

Longstanding employees were soon laid off and without any warning. Holiday bonuses were either cut from companies’ pay plans or reduced exponentially. Extensive vacation packages could no longer be offered, while healthcare benefits were sliced in half within many organizations.

Wages were frozen while employees were forced to conduct the tasks of their fellow colleagues, who had been laid off, on top of the responsibilities they already had. Most employees had no choice but to work for more hours than they ever had before, yet some did not even receive overtime pay for their efforts.

In short, to stay afloat and remain competitive in the midst of financial storms, employers eliminated many of their companies’ most desirable traits, which had attracted their workers in the first place.

By focusing solely on numbers instead of on their hard-working individuals, organizations established a trend which has hardly improved since – employees are no longer rewarded or recognized for their efforts, are unmotivated to regularly perform well, and no longer have any reasons to remain devoted.

Can this trend eventually be overcome or is it too late? Will employee loyalty soon become nonexistent?

For information regarding the ways in which employers can begin to reverse this trend once and for all, please visit this month’s edition of In The Future.