Things used to be simpler. You worked for the same company nearly all your life and strived to do a decent honest job. The company, in turn, kept you employ provided training, gave annual raises, and if you performed well, advanced you up the corporate ladder. The notion of loyalty went beyond this alone. It spoke to a sense of family and an unspoken commitment to see one another through hard times. The notion of loyalty conjured up an image of brotherhood, flowing both ways between worker and boss.
Looking back, I wonder if this sense of loyalty was merely a mirage created by prevailing market conditions. By and large, things were good. Many U.S. companies were still on top in industries like aerospace and defense and automobiles. We lacked strong competition from abroad. Many companies made huge profits, which created little incentive to scrutinize payrolls, costs and employees.
In those days, corporations regarded employees as more interchangeable, even at the highest ranks. One CEO was thought to be much like any other, just as one machinist was thought to be like the next. It was like baseball in the old days. Companies did little to try to steal employees from one another. It did happen on occasion, but for the most part there was no need to get into bidding wars. Loyalty, then, occurred almost by default. People simply stayed put. Loyalty was little more than complacency.
Times changed. Profits dwindled due to many factors: slower growth, greater competition both here and abroad, rising costs. And this meant examining expenses, including personnel expenses, looking for costs that could be done without. Mammoth companies began taking over other mammoth companies to gamer efficiencies of production, distribution and administration. It put greater distance between the people who did the work and those who counted the money. So people began losing their jobs at all levels. No one seemed safe.
And workers, as you would expect, cried foul. After all, they had given the best years of their lives to companies that were now quite prepared to toss them aside for the sake of profits. “Why aren’t our companies loyal to us?” they screamed. The answer was simple: the loyalty we thought existed never really did. It was simply a fantasy, a product of complacency.
Restructuring not only meant fewer employees, but doing more with the smaller numbers that were left. Suddenly, companies began to realize that all workers were not the same. A mad search began to identify those workers who could do the job of two people. That’s the easiest way to reduce expenses and keep productivity up, companies decided. So they began to identify and recruit the very best, stealing them away from one another at all levels. And when they did, the raided companies began to cry foul. “Where is the loyalty of our workers?” they said. “We trained them, and then they leave us in the lurch.” The answer again is the same: the loyalty we thought existed was a fantasy, a side effect of a healthy, burgeoning economy. Interestingly, companies never stop and think that they fuel this so-called disloyalty every time they “steal” from other companies. And when companies do entice others away they never realize that they are giving their new employee a pay boost that their past employer didn’t think they merited.
The confusion remains to this day. When a worker is laid off, he or she will mumble about the lack of company loyalty. Yet, it’s often the case that the company was not solely responsible for doing them in. It was their fellow employees who beat them out for fewer jobs in a tougher economy. And similarly, when a worker leaves for a significant increase in salary, many bosses will complain. Yet it’s unreasonable to expect an employee to stay with a company out of “loyalty” when it means passing on a higher-paying job or career possibilities that would benefit his or her family long term. The cost of oldtime loyalty can be high.
The loyalty we thought existed has been replaced with a sober understanding. On the company’s part, that understanding means hiring individuals to do a specific job at a marketplace wage, training them if needed, keeping their wages up to performance standards, then keeping them employed and advancing as long as their performance is maintained and the company can afford it. On the employee’s side, that understanding means staying on the job as long as the working conditions are suitable, the pay commensurate with the marketplace, the training available and the opportunities for advancement open. It’s a tough philosophy, but maybe it’s best that the old notion of company loyalty has been revealed for what it really was.
This doesn’t mean there is no such thing as having affection for a company or its employees. I have a deep fondness for my company, its leaders, the people I work with and the outstanding work we do. Compassion still exists, as does trustworthiness, honesty, decency, integrity. But the notion of loyalty as applied to a company is rapidly fading. And maybe that’s not so bad, as it raises certain expectations that can no longer be routinely fulfilled in today’s new realities.
