Abigail Anaba : I pledge to be loyal (Y! Superblogger)

by Abigail Anaba

loyalty

 

According to Wikipedia Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause. It is also defined as a strong feeling of support or allegiance. Synonyms of loyalty are: allegiance, fidelity, faithfulness, devotion and faith. 

You may not have heard of US Congressman Myers. He was a Democrat and member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. On August 22, 1979, he was involved in the Abscam scandal and was videotaped accepting a bribe of $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. On that tape he stated: Money talks, bullshit walks.

Employees are getting more and more disloyal, like bullshit they walk once ‘money talks’.

I was on a doctor’s appointment recently and asked the doctor consulting about a particular birth control method and he responded “I don’t think they do it here”. I didn’t take the conversation any further because in that one sentence he told me all I wanted to know, about him and about his attitude to the job he was doing. He had the ‘they’ mentality.

The ‘they’ mentality is often exhibited by workers who do not feel they have a stake in the company they work for or in their activities. Most employees with the ‘they’ mentality are not very loyal to the organizations they work for and would be ready to walk away once ‘money talks’.

What though is loyalty?

According to Wikipedia Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause. It is also defined as a strong feeling of support or allegiance. Synonyms of loyalty are: allegiance, fidelity, faithfulness, devotion and faith. In his book,” The Loyalty Effect” Fred Reichheld defines loyalty as the willingness to make an investment or personal sacrifice to strengthen a relationship.

If you are a budding entrepreneur, you may have realized how important it is to have loyal employees around you; people who will stick with you and have your back; people who will not walk because ‘money talks’.

Studies have shown that there is a direct link between employee loyalty and company growth and profitability. Look at it this way: when you have a lower employee turnover then you spend less on training and retraining of new employees. Therefore, you may want to invest in employee loyalty. This article offers some candid advice on how to foster employee loyalty http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/225432.

Yet, in this age where corporates are hanging around ready to poach any readymade human capital, individuals whose business are highly dependent on training manpower have to be careful that they spend more time in the recruitment process. It would be worth all the time and investment to sieve out individuals whose records have shown that they lack the capacity to be loyal. For instance, if a person’s CV reads like he is constantly on the lookout for “greener pastures” hardly spending up to a year in any place of employment then I doubt he would suddenly grow loyalty genes because you hired him.

As an employee, you may want to work on being more loyal by being less openly critical of your bosses. If you see something not going right, wouldn’t it be better to approach your boss in private instead of going on and on about it, whining to everyone ready to listen?

Also, do not be so quick to jump ship because you are offered a higher pay. Money is never everything. There is something I have always believed in that has often worked for me – paying my dues. See every job you take on a training ground. That entails that you have to stay long enough to learn all you need to before you think of moving on.

Even when you have to leave for some further career growth, do not just turn in a resignation. If you have been important to the company, give them enough time to train and get a replacement for you. That is what loyalty entails.

Remember, if you walk because money talks….then you are just, well “bullshit”.

Oh and as for the doctor…on my next appointment I was told he had walked.

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Abigail Anaba is a wife, mother, writer, teacher. She studied Mass Communications at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism. She blogs at www.anabagail.wordpress.com and tweets @anabagail

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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