Loyalty, Workplace

A generation ago organizations expected their employees to make a commitment to the company and its mission. In return for that commitment the employee could expect the organization to provide employment and growth opportunities. It was a covenant of reciprocal expectations. Both the employee and the company expected and received a degree of loyalty. This reciprocal loyalty reached its extreme in the paternalism of the Pullman company during the development of the railroad. In today’s marketplace loyalty no longer works that way.

The Erosion of Loyalty in the Workplace

Peter Block in his book The Empowered Manager reminds us that companies are not in business to take care of their employees. Ultimately only God will take care of you. While organizations still want their employees to make a commitment to the mission and the good of the company and while employees still want organizations who will take care of them and guarantee employment, both sides recognize that the constraints of the modern marketplace make these expectations unrealistic.

Max DePree, former chairman of the Herman Miller Company—a Fortune 500 company often listed among the best places to work in the United States—regularly notes that workers today are essentially volunteers. He is talking about volunteers not in the sense that they are unpaid but in the sense that they understand they have something to offer and expect a return on the investment of their time and energy. They choose to work where they work because of the exchange that the company offers. It is not a matter of loyalty. They are mobile and understand that they can choose to leave as easily as they choose to stay, taking their time, energy and knowledge with them to a new company where the exchange is better.

Another factor is also at work today. Global competitiveness and the changing marketplace are forcing companies to drastically reduce the work force, restructuring and reengineering themselves to be leaner and more competitive. The loyalty covenant is no longer shaping their attitudes toward employees. In his recent book The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin argues that the rapid progress of technology and information systems has created a rising technological unemployment, with millions of jobs being eliminated every year. Corporations are still loyal to their mission, to their investors, to their suppliers and indeed to those employees who remain, while they remain. The fact that they may eventually be replaced, however, severely limits the scope and depth of that loyalty.

On the one hand, we have workers who understand that their jobs can be eliminated and thus are looking out for themselves. In the organizations they serve, remaining competitive and providing a satisfactory return to their investors are necessary for survival and thus take precedence over loyalty to specific individuals. On the other hand, the rapid increase in unemployment following the progress in technology will eventually make it so difficult for workers to find other positions that the “volunteer’s” choice may, in fact, be removed. These two views both support the current attitudes toward loyalty and at the same time are at odds with one another. So what role does loyalty play in today’s workplace?

Loyalty in the Workplace Today

Loyalty is still an appropriate concept with regard to mission, to organizational values, to personal growth and relationships, and to God.

Loyalty to the mission. Every organization is formed around a mission, a specific purpose that defines each person’s contribution within the organizational community. While the unquestioning loyalty to the company of earlier decades is no longer appropriate, it is appropriate for an organization to expect its people to be committed to the mission of the community in which they choose to work. That commitment should draw employees into continually improving the contributions they make to the organization so that the mission can be achieved. It is the mission that brings them into relationship with the organization, and as long as they work in that context, the mission deserves their loyalty and the investment of their talents.

Loyalty to the values. Similarly, every organization operates with an organizational culture, a set of assumptions and beliefs that, if the organization is operating with integrity, will be expressed in the values by which it lives its corporate life. Organizations have the right to expect employees who choose to work in that community to exhibit a loyalty to the organizational values. It is these values that define the relationships of the people within the organization and the environment in which they work.

Loyalty to personal growth, yours and others’. As Peter Block has noted, while the organization should be expected to provide a responsible return on the investment of its employees, the company cannot be counted on to guarantee employment or future employability. It is incumbent upon employees to accept responsibility for their own growth, both in their ability to make a significant contribution to the organization and in their development for future employment in that company or another. Personal growth is the responsibility of the individual, and it may or may not be assisted by the organization. At the same time, employees in most cases work in relationships. It is appropriate that the loyalty we bring as individuals to our own growth and development be extended to those with whom we work. When the Christian concept of community is brought to the organization, it is a necessary corollary that individuals make a commitment of loyalty to one another in their relationships.

Loyalty to God. In the final analysis this is where loyalty is lodged. For example, Paul wrote to the Colossian congregation a letter that was to be read at the same time they were to accept Onesimus, the runaway slave, back into their midst as a Christian brother. He said, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23-24).

Christians in the marketplace work with full loyalty to God, a loyalty that manifests itself in commitment to the mission—the work to be done. This loyalty is also expressed in a commitment to the values of the community in which they choose to work, a commitment to grow both in their knowledge of God and in their ability to make a contribution to the organization and a commitment to the growth and well-being of those around them.

» See also: Calling

» See also: Career

» See also: Leadership

» See also: Management

» See also: Organization

» See also: Organizational Culture and Change

» See also: Organizational Values

» See also: Work

References and Resources

H. Blamires, The Christian Mind (London: SPCK, 1963); B. A. Grosman, Corporate Loyalty: A Trust Betrayed (Toronto: Penguin, 1988).

—Walter Wright Jr.