UNREQUITED LOYALTY

Today, the likelihood of spending all your working years with the same company is miniscule at best. And, that observation doesn’t point a finger solely at management, either: corporate loyalty among employers and employees has become quite an anomaly.

Now, that’s not to say it’s impossible to secure a lucrative position with a stable employer; indeed, while on the whole today’s corporate compensation packages may be more modest than in the past, some companies are working harder than ever to lure top performers by tendering extraordinarily competitive offerings - pay plans, pension packages, and potential partnerships that would make Don King proud. According to Vantage Solutions, LLC, as a part of annual compensation, companies offer an average of:

o       9.3 paid holidays, and

o       12 vacation days

 In addition,

   o       60% offer relocation benefits

o       26% offer a sign-on bonus

o       50% + offer flextime options

o       26% have telecommuters in the workforce

Despite that relatively good news, even the most qualified job-seekers say finding a good position isn’t the chief challenge, but retaining one is. A friend who is exceedingly qualified as a CIO finds himself in the job market more often than he ever thought possible, chiefly because he has made himself so valuable and specialized that his is always one of the first positions to be scrutinized, both monetarily and otherwise. And, because a lack of corporate tenure begets a lack of stability, it is easy to understand his regular return to the job market. Fair or not, that is the challenge countless professionals face today.

Understanding today’s workplace behavior requires a return to the Industrial Age. The Great Depression notwithstanding, when workers felt fortunate to have any job at all, The Industrial Age spawned repetitive jobs that people by and large despised, reassured only by the promise of decent pay and long-term benefits. Heavy industry, such as coal mining, oil exploration, steel production and automotive assembly employed a large percentage of the nation’s non-agricultural workforce, and the labor was arduous at best. Two of the residual consequences of that background are an oft-misplaced trust in upper management and a distinct lack of credit for an employee’s individual abilities.

These factors cast a gray cloud over workplace teams because they are never protected from upper management and because they seldom allow individuals to advance beyond certain boundaries.

This is not to say wonderful things haven’t been accomplished by teamwork, because they have. The space program, any major construction project, and the U.S. Congress (perhaps a little less ‘wonderful’ than the others) are three examples that come to mind immediately. With our new global, computerized economy, however, individual efforts are, and should be, far more rewarding than they have ever been. Today, individual workers can perform countless job functions, trade stocks, write books or buy and sell thousands of dollars of goods and services without ever leaving the comfort of a computer chair. And, more than ever, high-performing workers are choosing that route over corporate America, for a number of reasons:

·        They are responsible only to themselves. There are no bosses, no teams, no meetings and no coffee clutches, and if the worker wants a raise, he or she realizes exactly what must transpire for that to happen.

·        They don’t have to share recognition. The flip side benefit of being entirely responsible for one’s own success is that any time a sale is closed or a goal is reached, there is only one person to praise.

·        They don’t have to support under-performing team members. One of the most glaring inadequacies of some teams is the internal socialism that seeks to put all members on a plane, regardless of individual contributions to the work product. High performers don’t worry about being supported by anyone; they inherently prefer to support themselves.

·        They can be more flexible with home and family duties. While it can be maddening to calculate the ‘cost’ of downtime to anyone who is self-employed, unplanned family time is nonetheless the one job perk most at-home workers would never trade.

·        They may have to travel less. Depending upon one’s profession, self-employment may offer a respite for the frequent business traveler because of an increased ability to interact electronically.

·        They have complete control over the loyalty and passion they put into their work. If you don’t ever have to worry about being taken advantage of professionally, you are much more likely to attack your work with a sort of blind creativity.

Let’s focus on that last point for a moment. Passion and loyalty are two of the most valuable components any worker can bring to a position, yet they are palpably missing more and more in corporate America. Why? Because mismanaged teams discourage passion and loyalty.

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