Loyal Employees Quotes

What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

Loyalty is important, one of the most important character traits we can have. But loyal love does not mean infinite and/or misplaced responsibility for another's life, nor does it mean that one forever puts up with mistreatment out of inappropriate loyalty.

• Starting with trust and giving employees great autonomy and flexibility allows people to feel independent and empowered while still feeling like a part of something bigger. This leads to happy, loyal employees with a rich quality of life, which in turn leads to an amazing culture.

Maybe—and I just want you to think about it for the future—you should consider what other factors are important in employee retention. You know, like making people feel appreciated, giving them a reason to stay loyal to you. It isn’t just about a paycheck,” I replied as gently as I could, even though I knew damn well he didn’t exactly deserve to get handled with kid gloves. “You’ll find someone. It’s just not going to be me.

Only please, do be careful to bear in mind that Mordak’s a goblin. Enlightened, yes, but a goblin. He likes his employees loyal or lightly steamed on a bed of bruised rocket.

While in the past we may have wanted loyal employees, today we need flexible people who are not possessive about “the way things are done around here.” And

They believe if employees are treated right and well compensated, they will be loyal to the company. A loyal employee is worth his or her weight in gold.

For all the talk about the need to be a likable "team player," many people work in a fairly cutthroat environment that would seem to be especially challenging to those who possess the recommended traits. Cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance: these are the qualities of subordinates -- of servants rather than masters, women (traditionally, anyway) rather than men. After advising his readers to overcome the bitterness and negativity engendered by frequent job loss and to achieve a perpetually sunny outlook, management guru Harvey Mackay notes cryptically that "the nicest, most loyal, and most submissive employees are often the easiest people to fire." Given the turmoil in the corporate world, the prescriptions of niceness ring of lambs-to-the-slaughter.

The most loyal employees feel their leaders genuinely care about them… because their leaders genuinely care about them. In return, they offer their best ideas, act freely and responsibly and work to solve problems for the benefit of the company.

That part of warcraft always appealed to me. Such things happen slowly . . . and then all at once. The ground must be carefully prepared, often for generations. Corporations had been chipping away at the authority of governments for a century before the Seed Wars. They experimented with company towns, and then outrageous benefits for employees. As health care became more expensive, one didn’t even have to offer private transport and free meals. Simply helping pay the cost to cure grandma’s cancer was enough to ensure blind obedience. That’s how you keep them loyal. Foster distrust in the democratic governments that are actually accountable to them.

Evernote still came up with a bunch of clever tricks to get people to see its products while marketing was on their strategic back burner. After hearing customers complain that their bosses were suspicious of employees using their laptops in meetings, the Evernote team produced stickers that said, “I’m not being rude. I’m taking notes in Evernote.” Thus, their most loyal customers were turning into billboards that went from meeting to meeting. Once we stop thinking of the products we market as static—that our job as marketers is to simply work with what we’ve got instead of working on and improving what we’ve got—the whole game changes.

Why not simply allow them unlimited vacation? Anecdotal reports thus far are mixed—but from a game-theoretic perspective, this approach is a nightmare. All employees want, in theory, to take as much vacation as possible. But they also all want to take just slightly less vacation than each other, to be perceived as more loyal, more committed, and more dedicated (hence more promotion-worthy). Everyone looks to the others for a baseline, and will take just slightly less than that. The Nash equilibrium of this game is zero. As the CEO of software company Travis CI, Mathias Meyer, writes, “People will hesitate to take a vacation as they don’t want to seem like that person who’s taking the most vacation days. It’s a race to the bottom.

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it’s not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don’t want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it’s important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere.

Life as an Enron employee was good. Prestwood’s annual salary rose steadily to sixty-five thousand dollars, with additional retirement benefits paid in Enron stock. When Houston Natural and Internorth had merged, all of Prestwood’s investments were automatically converted to Enron stock. He continued to set aside money in the company’s retirement fund, buying even more stock. Internally, the company relentlessly promoted employee stock ownership. Newsletters touted Enron’s growth as “simply stunning,” and Lay, at company events, urged employees to buy more stock. To Prestwood, it didn’t seem like a problem that his future was tied directly to Enron’s. Enron had committed to him, and he was showing his gratitude. “To me, this is the American way, loyalty to your employer,” he says. Prestwood was loyal to the bitter end. When he retired in 2000, he had accumulated 13,500 shares of Enron stock, worth $1.3 million at their peak. Then, at age sixty-eight, Prestwood suddenly lost his entire Enron nest egg. He now survives on a previous employer’s pension of $521 a month and a Social Security check of $1,294. “There aint no such thing as a dream anymore,” he says. He lives on a three-acre farm north of Houston willed to him as a baby in 1938 after his mother died. “I hadn’t planned much for the retirement. Wanted to go fishing, hunting. I was gonna travel a little.

qualities and values every leader should strive to attain: crystal-clear direction plus an unwavering commitment and passion.

No child can avoid emotional pain while growing up, and likewise emotional toxicity seems to be a normal by-product of organizational life—people are fired, unfair policies come from headquarters, frustrated employees turn in anger on others. The causes are legion: abusive bosses or unpleasant coworkers, frustrating procedures, chaotic change. Reactions range from anguish and rage, to lost confidence or hopelessness. Perhaps luckily, we do not have to depend only on the boss. Colleagues, a work team, friends at work, and even the organization itself can create the sense of having a secure base. Everyone in a given workplace contributes to the emotional stew, the sum total of the moods that emerge as they interact through the workday. No matter what our designated role may be, how we do our work, interact, and make each other feel adds to the overall emotional tone. Whether it’s a supervisor or fellow worker who we can turn to when upset, their mere existence has a tonic benefit. For many working people, coworkers become something like a “family,” a group in which members feel a strong emotional attachment for one another. This makes them especially loyal to each other as a team. The stronger the emotional bonds among workers, the more motivated, productive, and satisfied with their work they are. Our sense of engagement and satisfaction at work results in large part from the hundreds and hundreds of daily interactions we have while there, whether with a supervisor, colleagues, or customers. The accumulation and frequency of positive versus negative moments largely determines our satisfaction and ability to perform; small exchanges—a compliment on work well done, a word of support after a setback—add up to how we feel on the job.28

The best is never the best, and pay attention to the smallest details.

The trouble with people is that we get hardening of the mental arteries, cirrhosis of the enthusiasm, and arthritis of the imagination,

Training cannot be limited to ‘Here’s what you need to do, now go do it.’ That’s not good enough. Training needs to instill a spirit, a feeling, an emotional connection. Training means creating an environment of thinking and feeling.

Laughter is no enemy to learning.

The most loyal Apple employees, like the most loyal Apple customers, all love a good revolution.

Average employee: Not too bright. Exceptionally well qualified: Made no major blunders yet. Character above reproach: Still one step ahead of the law. Zealous attitude: Opinionated. Quick-thinking: Offers plausible excuses. Careful thinker: Won’t make a decision. Takes pride in work: Conceited. Forceful: Argumentative. Aggressive: Obnoxious. A keen analyst: Thoroughly confused. Conscientious: Scared. Meticulous attention to detail: A nitpicker. Has leadership qualities: Is tall or has a loud voice. Strong principles: Stubborn Career-minded: Backstabber Coming along well: About to be let go. Independent worker: Nobody knows what he/she does. Forward-thinking: Procrastinator. Loyal: Can’t get a job anywhere else.

Loyal employees are the essential backbone of a vision driven business.

He attacked the FBI’s leadership with demeaning names: “nut job,” “phony,” “ignorant fool,” “major sleazebag.” 14 His most aggressive assaults often came in response to specific investigations, acts of retaliation and intimidation aimed at undermining FBI inquiries into his administration’s ties to Russia. To Trump, anyone who was not with him was against him, including a vast array of government employees who were supposed to be loyal to the facts and the truth and the law—and not to the Trump White House.

I know you don’t wish anything bad for me as long as I submit to the workflow and remain loyal to the values of the organization.

I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers. Our customers have made our business what it is, they are the ones with whom we have a relationship, and they are the ones to whom we owe a great obligation. And we consider them to be loyal to us—right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service.

But there is no rest for the weary. I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers. Our customers have made our business what it is, they are the ones with whom we have a relationship, and they are the ones to whom we owe a great obligation. And we consider them to be loyal to us—right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service.

Stay Loyal to People, Not Organizations Mitt Romney was wrong—corporations aren’t people. As British Lord Chancellor Edward Thurow observed more than two centuries ago, business enterprises “have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned.” As such, they do not deserve your affection or your loyalty, nor can they repay it in kind. Churches, countries, and even the occasional private firm have been touting loyalty to abstract organizations for centuries, usually as a ploy to convince young people to do brave and foolish things like go to war so old people can keep their land and treasure. It. Is. Bullshit. The most impressive students in my class are the young men and women who have served their country. We benefit (hugely) from their loyalty to our country, but I don’t think we (the United States) pay them their due. I believe it’s a bad trade for them. Be loyal to people. People transcend corporations, and people, unlike corporations, value loyalty. Good leaders know they are only as good as the team standing behind them—and once they have forged a bond of trust with someone, will do whatever it takes to keep that person happy and on their team. If your boss isn’t fighting for you, you either have a bad boss or you are a bad employee.

Whereas employees contribute time and energy, investors contribute capital (money). Both forms of contribution are valuable and necessary to help a company succeed, so both parties should be fairly rewarded for their contributions. Logically, for a company to get bigger, stronger or better at what they do, executives must ensure that the benefit provided by investors’ money or employees’ hard work should, as Adam Smith pointed out, go first to those who buy from the company. When that happens, it is easier for the company to sell more, charge more, build a more loyal customer base and make more money for the company and its investors alike.

The journalist Dan Lyons joined a tech start-up after being downsized from Newsweek in 2012, and the experience inspired him to write a book about how Bay Area norms have infected the American workplace, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us. Nominally egalitarian but oppressive in practice, the start-up spirit insists that everyone be super psyched about their jobs all the time. No one is actually loyal to the organziation in the sense of intending to work there for longer than five years, but what employees lack in commitment, they must make up for in enthusiasm. This mandatory passion is made worse by the smartphone. No one is every off duty anymore. The BlackBerry’s original tagline was “Always On. Always Connected.” Bizarrely, this made people want to buy it.

No growth decisions should damage the most important sources of sustainable, profitable growth: loyal and satisfied customers and happy and inspired employees.

Loyal, happy employees are engaged employees—and engaged employees are profitable employees

Life as an Enron employee was good. Prestwood’s annual salary rose steadily to sixty-five thousand dollars, with additional retirement benefits paid in Enron stock. When Houston Natural and Internorth had merged, all of Prestwood’s investments were automatically converted to Enron stock. He continued to set aside money in the company’s retirement fund, buying even more stock. Internally, the company relentlessly promoted employee stock ownership. Newsletters touted Enron’s growth as “simply stunning,” and Lay, at company events, urged employees to buy more stock. To Prestwood, it didn’t seem like a problem that his future was tied directly to Enron’s. Enron had committed to him, and he was showing his gratitude. “To me, this is the American way, loyalty to your employer,” he says. Prestwood was loyal to the bitter end. When he retired in 2000, he had accumulated 13,500 shares of Enron stock, worth $1.3 million at their peak. Then, at age sixty-eight, Prestwood suddenly lost his entire Enron nest egg. He now survives on a previous employer’s pension of $521 a month and a Social Security check of $1,294. “There aint no such thing as a dream anymore,” he says. He lives on a three-acre farm north of Houston willed to him as a baby in 1938 after his mother died. “I hadn’t planned much for the retirement. Wanted to go fishing, hunting. I was gonna travel a little.” Now he’ll sell his family’s land. Has to, he says. He is still paying off his mortgage.7 In some respects, Prestwood’s case is not unusual. Often people do not diversify at all, and sometimes employees invest a lot of their money in their employer’s stock. Amazing but true: five million Americans have more than 60 percent of their retirement savings in company stock.8 This concentration is risky on two counts. First, a single security is much riskier than the portfolios offered by mutual funds. Second, as employees of Enron and WorldCom discovered the hard way, workers risk losing both their jobs and the bulk of their retirement savings all at once.

I constantly remind our employees to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of our competition, but of our customers. Our customers have made our business what it is, they are the ones with whom we have a relationship, and they are the ones to whom we owe a great obligation. And we consider them to be loyal to us—right up until the second that someone else offers them a better service.” —Bezos (1998 Letter)

Although employers aren’t trying to entice employees to quit, their goal is similar in arriving at a compensation package to get the prospect to accept the offer and stay in the job. They must balance offering attractive pay and benefits with going too far and impairing their ability to make a profit. Employers also want employees to be loyal, and work long, productive hours, and maintain morale. An employer might or might not offer on-premises child care. That could encourage someone to work more hours . . . or scare off a prospective employee because it implies they may be expected to sacrifice aspects of their non-work lives. Offering paid vacation leave makes a job more attractive but, unlike offering free dining and exercise facilities, encourages them to spend time away from work. Hiring an employee, like offering a bet, is not a riskless choice. Betting on hiring the wrong person can have a huge cost (as the CEO who fired his president can attest). Recruitment costs can be substantial, and every job offer has an associated opportunity cost. This is the only person you can offer this opportunity. You might have dodged the cost of hiring Bernie Madoff, but you might have lost the benefit of hiring Bill Gates.

am Divinely guided in all my ways, and I adapt myself to all new ideas. Infinite Intelligence is constantly revealing to me better ways to serve my fellow man. I am guided and directed to create products that will bless and help humanity. I at- tract men and women who are spiritual, loyal, faithful, and talented, and who contribute to the peace, prosperity, and progress of our business. I am an irre- sistible magnet and attract fabulous wealth by giving the best possible quality of products and services. I am constantly in tune with the Infinite and the substance of wealth. Infinite Intelligence governs all my plans and purposes, and I predicate all my success on the truth that God leads, guides, and governs me in all my un- dertakings. I am at peace inwardly and outwardly at all times. I am a tremendous success. I am one with God, and God is always successful. I must succeed. I am succeeding now. I grasp the essentials of all details of my business. I radiate love and goodwill to all those around me and to all my employees. I fill my mind and heart with God’s love, power, and energy. All those connected with me are spiritu- al links in my growth, welfare, and prosperity. I give all honor and glory to God.” This business tycoon brought all these things that he had affirmed to pass, and he blessed countless others…Go, and do thou likewise (Luke 10:37), and become a multimillionaire blessing multitudes.

Typically, HSPs are highly conscientious, loyal, vigilant about quality, good with details, intuitive visionaries, often gifted, thoughtful of the needs of clients or customers, and good influences on the social climate of the workplace. In short, they are ideal employees. Every organization needs some.

She was a loyal employee, but always said nobody ever wished on their deathbed that they’d worked more overtime.

I went to talk to the project manager, Kent Stockwell. Although I had done all these computer things with the Apple I and Apple II, I wanted to work on a computer at HP so bad I would have done anything. I would even be a measly printer interface engineer. Something tiny. I told him, “My whole interest in life has been computers. Not calculators.” After a few days, I was turned down again. I still believe HP made a huge mistake by not letting me go to its computer project. I was so loyal to HP. I wanted to work there for life. When you have an employee who says he’s tired of calculators and is really productive in computers, you should put him where he’s productive.

In one of his first exploits, he called into Nokia from his own mobile phone and pretended to be a senior executive at the company. By studying the organizational chart and learning some detailed facts about the company, he was able to persuade someone in the IT department of his falsified identity. Mitnick claimed that he lost his copy of Nokia’s top mobile phone’s source code and needed it sent right away or he would be in big trouble. With this ruse, he was able to trick his mark into action. The loyal and unsuspecting employee complied, and within 15 minutes, Mitnick had the most important and confidential intellectual property of a multinational conglomerate.

Believing that your company is not just about making money, that there is a meaning and a purpose to what you do, that your company has a mission, and that you want to be part of that mission - that is a big prerequisite for working at one of these places. How that differs from joining what might otherwise be called a cult is not entirely clear. What is the difference between a loyal employee and brainwashed cultist? At what point does a person go from being the former to the latter?

Let me explain why we haven’t talked before. Part of my arrangement with Monte Leburne was that it would remain between the two of us. I won’t hand you a line about honor among thieves, but I want you to understand. I couldn’t say anything because I was sworn to secrecy. If I did, I would be betraying a loyal employee.” “Who might in return change his mind about not implicating you.” “The pragmatic is always a consideration,” Cozone agreed. “But mostly, I wanted to demonstrate to Monte and to my other employees that I am a man of my word.” “And

I don’t really care about being sweet to people who don’t look out for their employees interests. You know things like that get you loyal workers, but in your case you wouldn’t know a good employee from your ass any day of the week.

You’ll know that your company’s mission, vision, and values are being communicated effectively when you observe that your employees’ job satisfaction is high, that they have a customer service focus, and that they feel committed, loyal, and empowered. What that really means is that you need to think of everything in your business as marketing—from your business model to how you treat your employees to how you engage your investors.

Meanwhile, other cupcakeries were popping up all over Manhattan. A near Magnolia replica turned up in Chelsea when a former bakery manager jumped ship to open his own Americana bakeshop, Billy's (the one AJ and I frequented). Two Buttercup employees similarly ventured downtown to the Lower East Side and opened Sugar Sweet Sunshine, expanding into new flavors like the Lemon Yummy, lemon cake with lemon buttercream, and the Ooey Gooey, chocolate cake with chocolate almond frosting. Dee-licious. Other bakeries opted for their own approach. A husband-and-wife team opened Crumbs, purveyor of five-hundred-calorie softball-sized juggernauts, in outrageous flavors like Chocolate Pecan Pie and Coffee Toffee, topped with candy shards and cookie bits. There were also mini cupcakes in wacky flavors like chocolate chip pancake and peanut butter and jelly from Baked by Melissa and Kumquat's more gourmet array like lemon-lavender and maple-bacon. Revered pastry chefs also got in on the action. After opening ChikaLicious, the city's first dessert bar, Chika Tillman launched a take-out spot across the street that offered Valhrona chocolate buttercream-topped cupcakes. And Pichet Ong, a Jean-Georges Vongerichten alum and dessert bar and bakery rock star, attracted legions of loyal fans- no one more than myself- to his West Village bakery, Batch, with his carrot salted-caramel cupcake.

Bezos told employees that they could count on Amazon’s customers, those who had embraced the company and the services it provided, to remain loyal—right up until someone else, be it a significant competitor or a small start-up, gave them more of what they wanted.

If you have a great and loyal executive, how do you communicate all this? How do you tell her that despite the massive effort and great job she is doing today, you might fire her next year if she doesn’t keep up with the changes in the business? When I used to review executives, I would tell them, “You are doing a great job at your current job, but the plan says that we will have twice as many employees next year as we have right now. Therefore, you will have a new and very different job and I will have to reevaluate you on the basis of that job. If it makes you feel better, that rule goes for everyone on the team, including me.

My father was a renowned chef, who had learned his trade as an apprentice in Europe. During the depression with work hard to find, he accepted employment at Mafia run speakeasies “The Top Hat” and the “Gay Haven,” along with some other similar places, were roughshod, working class nightclubs in Union City, New Jersey, that hosted top performers. Ultimately, being recognized for his abilities, my father was offered the position of “Sous Chef” at the famous Lindy’s Restaurant in New York City, referred to as “Mindy’s” in Damon Runyon’s Broadway play “Guys and Dolls.” Being a loyal employee, he worked at Lindy’s for over three decades until his retirement. Union City, New Jersey, now has the second largest Cuban population concentration in the United States. But in earlier times it was known for having the rowdy “Hudson Burlesque,” as well as gathering places at the “Transfer Station,” where “men of means” could connect with “ladies of the night” and buy them a drink at one of the classy watering holes, such as the “Key Hole Bar and Grill.” I guess that it all came under the heading of “Entertainment.

The trouble with people is that we get hardening of the mental arteries, cirrhosis of the enthusiasm, and arthritis of the imagination, along with chronic and sometimes acute allergies to supervision, subordinates, the whole darned system. Is it possible that what we have gained through experience, we have lost through habit, and that what we have gained through organization, we have lost in enthusiasm? —

It is a regrettable fact that whenever a person works for hire the employer begins to see all the hired hand’s efforts as an extension of themselves. Whether rightly justified or not, owners, managers, and bosses only perceive their subservient employees as a separate identity whenever they make a mistake. When all is well and successes roll in, it is a natural as rain for superiors to accept the credit for their underlining’s efforts. Over an extended period, even the most sensitive of overseers can take a dutiful servant for granted. Likewise, a loyal servant can slowly subsume their psychological individuality by constantly addressing their master’s wants and needs.

In a more consistent and sustained way, I think, intellectuals who are close to policy formulation and can control patronage of the kind that gives or withholds jobs, stipends, promotions tend to watch out for individuals who do not toe the line professionally and in the eyes of their superiors gradually come to exude an air of controversy and noncooperation. Understandably of course, if you want a job done—let us say that you and your team have to provide the State Department or Foreign Office with a policy paper on Bosnia by next week—you need to surround yourself with people who are loyal, share the same assumptions, speak the same language. I have always felt that for an intellectual who represents the kinds of things I have been discussing in these lectures, being in that sort of professional position, where you are principally serving and winning rewards from power, is not at all conducive to the exercise of that critical and relatively independent spirit of analysis and judgment that, from my point of view, ought to be the intellectual’s contribution. In other words, the intellectual, properly speaking, is not a functionary or an employee completely given up to the policy goals of a government or a large corporation, or even a guild of likeminded professionals. In such situations the temptations to turn off one’s moral sense, or to think entirely from within the specialty, or to curtail skepticism in favor of conformity are far too great to be trusted. Many intellectuals succumb completely to these temptations, and to some degree all of us do. No one is totally self-supporting, not even the greatest of free spirits.

Many executives, for their part, want the economic advantages of customer loyalty but ignore the inspirational side of NPS. They forget that it’s impossible to create loyal customers without first inspiring a team of employees so they become promoters themselves. Who would go out of their way for a customer unless he or she is proud and inspired to be part of the team? And while there are many ingredients of employee engagement—the right training and development, rewards, opportunity for growth, the feeling of being valued, and so forth—the real foundation is this: employees must be able to treat customers and colleagues in a manner that makes them proud. When leaders and their teams consistently treat people right, when they can be relied upon to do the right thing, then an organization can truly be worthy of loyalty.

people who share your beliefs and want to incorporate your ideas, your products and your services into their own lives as WHATs to their own WHYs. They look to WHAT you do as a tangible element that demonstrates their own purpose, cause or belief to the outside world. Their willingness to pay a premium or suffer inconvenience to use your product or service says more about them than it does about you and your products. Their ability to easily see WHY they need to incorporate your products into their lives makes this group the most loyal customers. They are also the most loyal shareholders and the most loyal employees. No matter where they sit in the spectrum, these are the people who not only love you but talk about you. Get enough of the people on the left side of the curve on your side and they encourage the rest to follow.

Capital sees politicians as a means to their ends, just another employee, or a potential bankable asset. And politicians, whoring themselves to the highest bidder, write their laws for a seat at the table. Some politicians aren’t directly on the take but, it’s hard to imagine, that, while on the public’s dime, they’re at least not on a job interview. Capital rewards their loyal underlings with no-show jobs for their idiot relations.

Achievement Seekers will prefer to be recognized one-on-one or in a team meeting. You need to be specific about what they achieved. Even better, point to how what they did helped the team or the organization accomplish goals. This group would gather even more motivation if their achievement was compared to others on a leaderboard.

Authority Seekers feel that they are successful when they are promoted into higher positions of authority. These employees will feel accomplished when they have more control and responsibility throughout their day. Look to set a clear and definite career path for this group. Let them take on special projects that have significant exposure.

Affiliation Seekers long for positive relationships with others. They would not want to be limited in their ability to connect with and touch other lives. If you want to recognize this group, allowing them to lead committees of coworkers in common goals would be the best way to do that. For the introvert in this group, providing them opportunities to take part in groups of employees would be a big perk. They would also feel good about themselves if they are selected to mentor others.

In a 2016 study, Gallup looked at employee recognition and found that the most memorable recognition comes most often from an employee’s manager (28 percent), followed by a high-level leader or CEO (24 percent), the manager’s manager (12 percent), a customer (10 percent) and peers (9 percent).

When I refer to crowdsourcing recognition, I mean that organizations should plan to include and embrace a multi-tiered approach to recognize employees. By planning and opening up the recognition pipeline, organizations take the pressure off managers to do all of the heavy lifting. While an employee’s manager is still the most important recognition source from whom employees should receive recognition, hearing praise from others outside of that employee-manager relationship can be the difference between an employee feeling valued or not feeling valued at all.

The study also recommended that employees receive some form of formal recognition every seven days.

Coworker Recognition Over the years, I have found that coworker recognition is a great way to fill the potential gaps that exist in the first two levels of recognition. What processes do you have in place to help all coworkers recognize when they see the good deeds of others? TINYpulse, an employee feedback, recognition, and performance management software company, created Cheers for Peers, a coworker recognition module. Ketti Salemme, the company’s former senior communications manager, told me that they “realized that managers don’t see all the things employees do. When other employees send recognition, it goes miles. The cool thing is that managers can see what others are seeing and can mention it so that their work does not go unnoticed.

An employee’s most basic expectation from an employer is that they will feel valued for the work that they do for the organization.

Employees feel valued and successful when they feel their voice is heard. Not only that, they feel like a vested member of the organizations when, at least, some of their voice leads to positive change.

Pulse Surveys Pulse surveys are real-time surveys that are short and provide immediate feedback to managers and the organization. They are excellent tools to drive more employee engagement and create a culture of transparency. Platforms like, TINYpulse, help organizations gather this anonymous feedback by asking just one question per week to gauge employee engagement and provide actionable insights.

One-On-One Interviews This is one of the most effective ways to gather raw feedback, particularly if they trust the interviewer and know that their feedback will remain anonymous. This is where the rubber meets the road with employee listening, because I have found that employees rarely hold back.

Stay Interviews There is a growing trend toward conducting employee-stay interviews in place of, or in addition to, exit interviews. This is primarily due to unsuccessful attempts to gather trustworthy feedback from people on their way out the door. It turns out that current employees are much more likely to give human resources the time of day and even sit to talk about the work environment. Also, they are more likely to provide balanced feedback.

Many businesses make assumptions about what their employees want and need without first involving them in the decision-making process. In the end, you know what they say about assumptions. If we steer clear of making them, our business might reflect what the employee really wants.

78% said they would remain longer with their employer if they saw a career path with the current organization.

According to TINYpulse’s 2017 Employee Engagement Report, titled The Broken Bridges of the Workplace, professional development ranked third as a driver for employee happiness. In this report, TINYpulse found that only 26% of employees feel there are adequate opportunities for professional growth. When asked if employees felt that their promotion and career path was clear to them, only 49% believe so.

In TINYpulse’s 2017 report, they uncovered that only 25% of employees feel management is transparent about career progression opportunities.

I’m not quite sure what promotions, if any, are or are not available to me or my colleagues at our level. There seems to be a high rate of turnover that may be, in part, due to a lack of clarity on how to grow within the business.” “While I feel like there is a lot of future opportunity in the organization, I have no idea how to get promoted. My manager has never discussed development or promotion opportunities with me.” “It has never been explained to me what each role entails and what I need to achieve in order to progress. I have only been told by my current and past team leader to ‘carry on how you’re doing,’ which is a compliment. However, it would be better if everyone was given some sort of document which consists of targets you need to hit in order to progress in the company.

Keep Plussing the Show: No Room for Excuses

Learn the best psychological strategy to help keep any employee or customer from ever leaving you.

Here are some scary statistics: Each year the average company loses 20-50% of its employee base Cost of replacing entry level employees: 30-50% of their annual salary Cost of replacing mid-level employees: 150% of their annual salary Millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. The cost of replacing high-level or highly specialized employees: 400% of their annual salary.

People are not “the company’s greatest asset,” they ARE the company.

This book is not as much focused on how to keep employees for a lifetime as it is focused on retaining them longer than they would ordinarily stay and turning them into brand advocates for future recruiting

The book is organized using the following seven Laws: Give them great supportive managers Recognize your employees often Give them a voice and do something about it Grow and promote their talents Foster deep connections with and in them Make team the focus Pay them equitably

The main factor in workplace discontent is not wages, benefits, or hours, but the boss.

When a manager chooses to speak with team members regarding their professional development, this tells the team member that no matter how many course-correction discussions they have had, the manager still wants to invest time in developing them.

Leaders who focus on meeting their teammates where they are and find ways to inspire the greatness within them will have crazy success in keeping them for the long haul and getting plenty of good employee referrals along the way.

We often think of leaders as strong and confident individuals who possess or show very few faults. I would argue that we should turn this idea of leadership on its head. Vulnerable leaders are more beloved. Show more of yourself if you want to connect with and retain your team members.

How do you show up? How do you handle setbacks? This can be difficult to do for many, but we can never really gain our team’s respect without revealing that we are human and mess up sometimes. Employees are drawn to leaders who don’t fear appearing imperfect. A team will never really grow to be fruitful without this important ingredient.

Contract Reinforcement: Start tracking every day that you say hello to just one of your team members, then make sure to start and greet others too. You will make them feel like valuable members of the team and not just a number.

From my experiences with managing teams in different settings, I have discovered that transparent leaders are much more effective at building loyal and cohesive teams than those who attempt to keep information close to their vests. As far as leadership qualities go, transparency is a differentiator.

Nonetheless, our goal should always be to help set a vision for each individual that complements their talents and gifts and encourage them to see the possibilities more clearly.

Effect On Culture Organizations are made up of people. Those people work and “live” there with other people at least 40 hours per week. Like the connective tissue that begins to form when we are injured or when we are healing and becomes a part of who we are, team members are a part of the connective tissue of the organization. What happens when we remove or tear out a piece of that tissue? Not only does it hurt a lot, it causes heavy bleeding. If it doesn’t heal properly, there are complications. We may never regain our function in that area. When good productive people leave, we feel the pain and so does the culture of the team. The only way to mend the tissue permanently is to do the right things to engage and retain them. Spillover Effect We don’t talk about this much, but there is a psychological impact on other productive and engaged employees when they are forced to work with disengaged employees. Whether it is during water cooler talk or just in combined work spaces, the negative energy that disengaged employees pass to the entire team and organization can be toxic. Oftentimes, the disengaged employees are the scapegoats to deeper organizational issues. When we do not look at what is causing them to be disengaged, we enable the spillover effect to continue. Organizations that want a thriving workplace must rid themselves of disengaged employees, not necessarily by termination, but by living by the Laws found in this book. Negative Word Of Mouth Remember that unhappy employees don’t make for good promoters of your brand. In fact, disengaged employees are likely to tell more people and blurt it out all over social media and at every party. Reputationally, this negative word of mouth works against your brand promise. Who are you out in the world to your customers? Whatever that is, it must match who you are to your employees. Loss Of Organizational Stability Stop for a minute and think about what it says to your customers, partners, and investors when your employees keep walking out the door. Potentially, they could be in the middle of a complex project implementation and having a consistent point of contact through that process is key.

The authors of The Alliance posit that frequent checkpoints create a perfect scenario where employer and employee sit down to openly discuss their expectations, to calibrate where the other wants to go and to fill any gaps that may have developed along the way.

Having said that, the most important tactical thing I ever instituted as a leader was to set one-on-one meetings every single week with my team members.

Thinking back on my long career as a customer-facing leader, I was most successful when I met my customers where they were. I focused on what inspired them and how I could ignite that inspiration in order to keep them engaged and retain them. Employees are no different.

Teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity. Gallup 2014 - State of the American Workplace Think about it. If you could spend the majority of your time at work performing tasks that highlight your strengths, wouldn’t you be happier? In fact, for most of us, if we could spend most of our days focusing on our strengths, we would even work for free. (Okay, this might be a stretch, but you get my point.) Organizations that have discovered how to extract the natural talents and strengths of their employees are more productive, more profitable, and more adored.

Temkin Group research points to the fact that engaged employees are 78% more likely to do something that is good for their company even if it is not expected of them. Temkin also uncovered that “companies with superior financial performance have 1.6 times as many engaged employees as do companies with lagging financial performance.

Meet with your team members and ask them what might be holding the m back from being their best. Help them take back their personal power.

30% more of the workforce is satisfied when there’s even an informal recognition program in place. 75% of employees receiving at least monthly recognition (even if informal) are satisfied with their job. 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.

Years ago, I worked in an organization that had a neat way of instilling the act of recognition in their culture. They created these cards that any employee could use to recognize another for just doing good work. They were black and white and very basic, but were accessible to everyone to use. I was impressed by how much people used them. The most impacting part was how much pride the recipients had when they received the cards. They would post them on their cubicle walls. It was a symbol of accomplishment and pride in the work that they did together every day.

Nonetheless, research shows that employees will not recall recognition if they are not recognized every seven days.

I would argue that a leader must first know what motivates each of their team members before he/she can set out to recognize them. This is because not all forms of recognition are effective for or desired by every person.

According to famed psychologist David McClelland, there are three basic types of motivation: 1) Achievement, 2) Authority and 3) Affiliation. Achievement Seekers Those who seek Achievement are looking for the following things: They attain realistic but challenging goals. Achieving the task is its own reward. Financial reward is a measurement of success. Security/status are not the primary motivators. Feedback is a quantifiable measure of success. They seek improvement. Authority Seekers Employees who seek Authority are looking for the following things: They value their ideas being heard and prevailing. Having influence and impact is the most important reward. They show leadership skills and enjoy directing others. Increasing personal status and prestige is important. Affiliation Seekers Employees who are motivated by Affiliation are looking for the following things: They need friendly relationships and are motivated by interaction with others. Being liked and held in high regard is important. They are team players. Emotions are a larger motivating factor than quantifiable data. They are in tune with others’ feelings and seek to make others happy.

they argued that within most companies—no matter how great the product or loyal the customers—things would eventually fall apart unless employees trusted one another.