Loyal customers are vital to business success. But loyal employees are also as important as those loyal customers. Without loyal people inside your organization, your business operation might be at risk. The success of your sales or revenue generation also depends on your production. Your production relies on your workers. If you don’t have loyal, motivated, and productive employees, chances are, you might not get the targeted results and performance for your business. That is why every manager and employer should take great consideration on how to encourage loyalty among their workers. The following are simple yet very challenging ways to having loyal employees and members of your organization.
Be loyal to them
Do you want your employees to be loyal to you and to your company? Then let that loyalty start within you. Be a role model of loyalty by doing and showing the following:
• Be loyal to the company’s good policies. Don’t break your organizational rules.
• Devote your time on giving care and helping your employees. Ask them if they are alright. Ask them about their problems and how you may help them.
• Be honest. Don’t fool them. Did you promise or make an oath in front of your employees? Then deliver those promises.
• Be faithful. Be optimistic. To substantiate your optimism, give extra effort to know and discover the good things about your employees.
• Protect them. Invest on their security and welfare. Don’t let them work in a hazardous working environment. Don’t put them on a trap. Protect them from fraud and unlawful activities.
Exceed their expectations
Wow your employees! Provide them with things and benefits that are beyond their expectations. Don’t be contented with giving what they expect to receive. Well, it’s kind of boring and unmoving. And if you’re providing your employees with things below their expectations, don’t expect an army of loyal employees, rather, expect of irritated or unmotivated people. To wow your employees, here are some things you may consider trying:
• Give them a surprise bonus or money incentive
• Invite them for an interesting company outing they never expected. Deliver it.
• Announce a nonworking paid day during regular days to thank them for the hard work they’ve given to your company and to give them some good rest or time for their family.
• Treat them for a fine dinner.
• Thank, recognize, and honor your employees for a job well done.
• Be gentle and merciful during the times that they are expecting you to be mad.
Fulfill their dreams
You don’t need to fulfill their greatest dreams, such as becoming a billionaire or realizing their dream houses. Every person has simple dreams. If you want to encourage loyalty from your employees, then you’ve got to fulfill even their tiny dreams, which may have a big impact on them.
You may try giving them some questionnaire, which may include the questions about their biggest and simplest dreams in life to determine how can you fulfill some or a part of them and make them happy for a time.
In the business and corporate world where work stresses and pressures are regular part of employees’ lives, a few days vacation in a relaxing spot free from office or work atmosphere is perhaps one of the wildest dreams in their life. Thus, consider helping them to realize such simple dream.
Value them
Sometimes, employees may reach out to the management. They may tell the managers about their problems and even ask for their help. If you’re part of the management, remember that people won’t ask help from someone whom they think can’t help them. A person asks somebody because he trusts that this somebody can provide him a solution or an answer.
It requires courage to tell. It requires trust and confidence to seek help from anyone. Thus, if your employees will approach and ask some help from you, don’t ignore them. Listen to what they say. Act with justice and righteousness on what you have heard from them. Value their effort, courage and honesty… especially when these things are uncommon in your organization. If you want to earn loyalty from your employees, make them feel valued.
Love your employees
Loyalty is better built from the heart. Hence, if you want to ensure that your employees will be loyal to you and to your company, be a loving manager and leader. Managers who have genuine love for their people are hard to find these days. Therefore, if you want your employees to be loyal and to stick with you, be one of these hard to find persons.
To love your employees, you should have hope, faith and consistent actions. To be consistent, you have to produce more patience. Love them by starting to love yourself. Loving yourself means having personal development, which involves training yourself to be patient, peaceful, compassionate, honest and diligent. It is also about keeping yourself away from greediness, pride, envy and injustice, which are dangerous to yourself and to the people whom you lead.
Conclusion
If you want to make your employees loyal, aim for making everyone inside your organization loyal to each other. In other words, you should not just wish loyalty to develop from your workers. But as the leader and the one who is in power, you should start that loyalty from you.
Be a role model of loyalty so that your employees will be encouraged to be loyal to you. Be devoted to them if you want them to be devoted to you. You are the leader, hence, be the one to initiate it. You are the manager, hence, be the first to manage loyalty within you.
Finally, remember that loyalty is a long-lasting attachment. Therefore, don’t just attempt to develop it in a short span of time. But strive to build it daily with patience and persistence.
Victorino Q. Abrugar is a marketing strategist and business consultant from Tacloban City, Philippines. Vic has been in the online marketing industry for more than 7 years, practicing problogging, web development, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and consulting.
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