In the last couple of posts (1, 2), we’ve discussed loyalty from the perspective of personal relationships.  Without the ability to be loyal to those around you and maintain relationships with people who are loyal to you, it is difficult to find happiness and maintain a sense of well-being.

Today, we’ll turn our focus to workplace relationships and performance.  Does loyalty have an impact on how you’ll perform as an employee and a leader?  More than you might imagine…  

The authors of  Why Loyalty Matters site an extensive study conducted at Harvard Business School (Heskett, Sasser, Schlesinger), that boils down the critical elements of employee performance.  This study is unique because it focuses specifically on the factors that must be present for an employee to provide outstanding customer service (i.e. meet the needs of a customer). 

Here is what the researchers learned:

1. Capability: Capable employees can deliver high-value service to customers. This implies that employees have the training, tools, procedures, and rules to deliver good service.
2. Satisfaction: Satisfied employees treat customers better than their dissatisfied counterparts.
3. Loyalty: Loyal employees are more willing to suppress short-term demands for the long-term benefit of the organization. As such, they may, themselves, place a priority on good customer service. Loyal employees also stay with their organizations longer, reducing the cost of turnover and its negative effect on service quality.
4. Productivity: Productive employees have the potential to raise the value of a firm’s offerings to its customers. Greater productivity can lower costs of operations, which can mean lower prices for customers.

Doesn’t it seem that loyalty is out of place on this list?  I understand that a person must be capable, productive, and generally happy to provide good customer service.  But loyal?  Although it may seem odd, the research strongly demonstrates this connection.

If you are responsible for recruiting and coaching those on your team, this information should have an impact on how you perform these functions.  Can you expect an agent or an employee to consistently satisfy your customers if they do not feel loyal to you and your organization?  Don’t bet on it.  Does it make sense to hire new agents and employees who have demonstrated high performance, but have a pattern of disloyal behavior?  Again, this is not a formula for long-term success. 

But, how can we reconcile the necessity and benefits of loyalty when we work for companies, who through no fault of their own, must participate (at times) in disloyal behaviors towards their employees?  I thought the authors did a great job of addressing this point:

“So the belief by some that employee loyalty is dead is absolutely, without a doubt, wrong [based on the research sited above]. Loyalty is critical both to a company’s long-term success, and to our own happiness [see the second posting in this series].  As famed management expert Tom Peters once observed:

‘I think loyalty is much more important than it ever was in the past.  Today loyalty is the only thing that matters.  But it isn’t blind loyalty to the company.  It’s loyalty to your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty to yourself.  I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty than mindless loyalty to the Company Z logo.’

We spend far too much of our lives working not to derive some pleasure from it.  But doing so requires that we build strong connections with others.  And strong connections are build on loyality.”

Editor’s Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.