The Ultimate Guide for Driving Employee Loyalty In the Workplace

Achieving greater employee loyalty is one of the biggest goals for every organization. The advantages of having loyal employees are priceless because these employees are more engaged in their work, they are more motivated to do a great job, and they tend to stay longer with their employers. 

Loyal employees not only work hard for their pay but they are committed to the success of their company and they are motivated by contributing to that success. Oftentimes, these people put the company’s interests ahead of their own, but are always striving to improve themselves and their roles.

Loyal employees are happy employees, after all, and as Forbes reports, happy employees mean “hefty profits”.

Let’s take a look at 10 ways to make your employees more loyal to your organization.

1. Understand Your Employees’ Expectations

The most important step in improving employee loyalty in any organization is understanding the factors that shape positive employee experience. 

These factors can vary across organizations, cultures, locations, generations, and other criteria. Some people care about flexibility and some prefer bigger compensation. Younger generations often care about career progression opportunities, while older ones often care about job security. 

To shape a positive workplace experience and boost employee loyalty, employers need to understand the biggest motivators and engagement drivers for their people. 

The simplest, and most efficient way to get insights from employees is by creating and distributing a simple employee survey. This survey can be as simple as asking your employees to put various employee experience factors in order of importance. 

Luckily, modern employee experience platforms can structure the collected data so that they provide valuable insights and actionable recommendations for improvement. This way, employers know exactly how to improve their employees’ engagement and loyalty in the workplace. 

2. Build and Nurture a Transparent Company Culture

According to research, almost 80% of employees say that a strong company culture allows them to do their best work. Today, employees expect their employers and leaders to be transparent and open. 

Internal communications departments play a critical role in building and nurturing such culture. They should be the creators and promoters of transparency in the workplace and should give their best to keep the workplace connected and aligned with the ultimate business goals. 

Furthermore, employees want frequent feedback, both top-down and bottom-up. Agile, on-the-spot feedback encourages openness in the workplace and helps build trust and loyalty. Also, make sure that you always act on feedback because turnover is around 15% higher for companies that do not act on employee feedback.

Open company culture also naturally drives the culture of learning and knowledge sharing, and, companies with strong learning cultures retain employees at a 30–50% higher rate than those without.

3. Provide Personalized Employee Experience

Employees are much more likely to be loyal, engaged, and productive when their workplace experiences are personalized to their needs, wants, expectations, and their jobs. 

Unfortunately, too many employers are still not able to provide the level of personalization to their employees as much as they do to their customers. 

For example, most employers deliver the same type of content to every employee, they send the same surveys to all employees, and they don’t have a way to make their workplace tech stack more personalized and relevant to each end user. 

Moreover, some of the biggest experts in the field believe that employees should be able to create their own workplace experiences based on their needs and interests. According to Josh Bersin:

“Companies are no longer happy with end-to-end talent management systems designed for HR – we now need platforms that help employees (and contingents) manage their own talent experience at work.”

Lack of personalization in the workplace results in low employee motivation, and companies with a highly motivated workforce are 21% more profitable.

4. Invest More In People Analytics

Being data-driven is a prerequisite for making your workplace more loyal. Regularly measuring the pulse of your employees and their sentiments is such a powerful way to find gaps, problems, and opportunities for improvement. 

Over 70% of companies use people analytics to improve their performance, according to a Deloitte report.

So make sure that you perform frequent pulse surveys to prevent turnover, burnout, and disengagement. Thankfully, there are workplace technologies and solutions that make this process more streamlined, automated, and efficient. Some AI-powered solutions are built to enable leaders with actionable insights about their teams through intelligent surveys. With automated surveys and analytics leaders and HR departments can anticipate problems and identify the best practices to support and engage every employee.

5. Improve Onboarding

A previously mentioned study showed that 9% of employees left their jobs because of bad onboarding, and almost 40% said that their manager was not part of their onboarding. A good onboarding experience, on the other hand, is responsible for 69% of employees staying with a company for at least three years.

Even though these statistics prove the importance of good employee onboarding, many employers still don’t invest enough effort into improving it. 

Employee onboarding should be a structured process in which new hires get access to important company information, documents, tools, and people. Your company’s intranet is the best place to deliver a great onboarding experience but it needs to be structured and organized in a way that makes onboarding seamless, efficient, and personalized to every new hire.

6. Look for Quiet Quitting Behaviors

Quiet quitting is a term used to describe a workplace behavior in which employees perform just enough work to fulfill their main duties and responsibilities. 

As simply explained in the Harvard Business Review article: 

“Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.”

Naturally, employees who demonstrate quiet quitting behaviors are much less likely to be loyal to their employers. 

Furthermore, they can have a negative impact on other employees who are otherwise engaged and motivated to do their best at work.

7. Re-asses Your DEI Initiatives

A company’s diversity and inclusion initiatives can have a significant impact on employee loyalty and engagement in the workplace. 

According to research by Deloitte,

“employee perceptions of their organization’s diversity practices were directly related to their levels of engagement. Importantly, perceptions in this case are not of the diversity ideology or values, but more importantly perceptions of actual ‘policies and practices that make up an organization’s diversity practices.”

Another research shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. 

So make sure that you hire a diverse workforce, that you encourage equity and fairness in the workplace, and that you make your company inclusive and accessible to everyone.

8. Re-train Your Leaders

According to research by Gallup, 70% of employees’ motivation is influenced by their manager. Both experts and employees agree that one of the most influential factors in employee engagement and performance is the employee-supervisor relationship. 

So investing in your organization’s leaders can go a long way in making employees more loyal. It is particularly important to help your managers become transformational leaders who practice empathy, are great communicators, and care about their people’s well-being. 

Why?

Employees are especially repulsed by callous bosses, as not only do 93% find empathy crucial for retention, but 82% directly state that they would leave a position to work for a more empathetic organization.

💡 Related: What Are The Top 24 Leadership Skills That Make a Great Leader?

9. Recognize Those Who Show Loyalty

According to research, 79% of employees quit their jobs because of a lack of appreciation. So building a culture of appreciation in your company is a great way to boost loyalty among workers and embed desirable behaviors and attitudes. 

Employee recognition programs don’t have to be expensive. Many employees prefer non-monetary rewards over monetary ones. What is important, however, is to make recognition programs easy, fun, and inclusive. Also, make sure that you practice social recognition. Meaning, acts of appreciation should be visible to everyone so that others can celebrate their peers’ success and achievements.  

📹 Looking for other ways to engage your workforce? Check out our Masterclass!

10. Make Compromises and Provide Greater Flexibility

Currently, 55% of knowledge workers can choose between working from home or working from the office on a given day, and 51% can choose to live in an area other than where their office is located, according to a new study by Atlassian.

Greater flexibility at work has become a priority for many people, regardless of generation. According to a study by LiveCareer,  76% of Millennials, 69% of Gen Z, and 64% of Gen X say that they expect their employers to provide flexible work arrangements. 

Those organizations that are not ready to make such compromises are already lagging behind. They are struggling with lower engagement and loyalty from their employees. Consequently, they are more likely to face higher turnover rates.

Conclusion

Employee loyalty is complex and – like any other form of commitment – requires trust and effort at its foundation. Employers must consistently show that employee experience is a priority for the business. That includes many aspects, such as flexibility, compensation, transparent communications and much more. While the amount of resources it requires might appear intimidating, it pays off. Loyal employees not only contribute to high retention rates, but they’re also a prerequisite for happy customers and higher business revenue.