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Does staff loyalty still exist?

// April 22nd, 2010 // Technical Know-It-All

Before I joined the work force many years ago, I never quite understood why employees these days rarely stay beyond 3-4 years in an organisation. Are those days where employees work for 10 years or so in a company gone, or is there something that either the employers/employees aren’t doing right?

Now, after being in the industry for a while and experiencing it first hand, I think I’m beginning to understand more. Here are my views from a techies standpoint.

1. Technically sound professionals are usually very loyal to an organisation if treated right. For techies, 2 key factors play a part in this. The opportunity to learn or upgrade their skills and their relationship with their reporting managers. While monetary returns are usually important, it is probably not the most important element when it comes to techies. Techies like to be challenged and need to stay sharp, that is why training is essential. Being stingy on training because of cost (economic conditions) is not exactly the best of excuses because cost is usually easily allocated to other departments that are perceived to be more important than the IT teams.

2. Relationship with the manager is probably the key factor behind staff loyalty that applies to all fields. If you can’t get along with your managers, no matter how much you like your job, it is always gonna be a challenge. Truthfully, there are only 2 ways around it. Live with it or just leave. Many experienced techies usually leave an organisation for greener pastures but lesser experienced techies will just live by it. I used to be in the “live by it” class, but I have come to realised that change might not be such a bad thing. I guess if its already bad, it can only get better right?

3. Company loyalty = Staff loyalty. Organisations these days are so much about dollars and cents that they forget that it is the people within it that drives the business. A happy staff equals a profitable company. Why don’t organisations realise this? Google isn’t up there because they slave drive their staff. Imagine programmers dragging their feet to meet a dateline, and marketing staff slacking off. How is that gonna help Google? Many companies are getting rid of the junior staff in favor of senior staff with the reason being, “bad economic conditions”. How many junior staff does it take to equal the salary of a senior director (that has potentially led the organisation into this mess)? Staff loyalty only exist if company loyalty exists. Period.

4. Cronyism is another big factor that deters many from staying in an organisation. While it is more discreet in Western work force, it is exceptionally prevalent in Asian organisations. Everyone likes to be boot-licked. Yes, I do agree. But we must be wary that it does not become a dominant culture. I’m not saying that all brown-nosers are incompetent, but the majority of them are. This will severely impact the organisations performance, not to mention that you will potentially lose valuable staff because of this. Techies like myself, just despise cronyism. Why? I suppose we are just geeky and we like to stand for whats right I suppose. .