In general, employee loyalty can be best described in terms of a process, where certain attitudes give rise to
certain behaviors (intended or actual). There have been major changes in the business world and the
workforce in the last couple of decades. In the past, once hired an employee believed it was a life time job
and managers expected their unstinted loyalty to the enterprise. Similarly, workers used to be devoted to
their employer. This image of employment loyalty has gradually changed with the advent of “globalization”
when employees began to face restructuring, company relocations, and downsizing. Employers ‘broke the
rules’, mutual obligations are reconsidered, life time employment and devotion is no longer expected, jobhopping
is considered to be a normal phenomenon, and people are constantly striving for higher salaries or
better working conditions.
Loyalty and trust have become more difficult to obtain and give in the work place.Loyalty seems like a quality
that's becoming increasingly harder to find, whether it's employee loyalty to a company or consumer loyalty
to a product. In the past, employees believed when they were hired by a company that they would be with
that company until they retired. Starting in the 1980s as companies sought to increase profits, workers'
perceptions of lifetime employment were shattered by corporate downsizing, company relocations to other
states or countries and static wages.
Loyalty has two dimensions: internal and external. Loyalty is, fundamentally, an emotional attachment. The
internal dimension is the emotional component. It includes feelings of caring, of affiliation and of commitment.
This is the dimension that must be nurtured and appealed to. The external dimension has to do with the way
loyalty manifests itself. This dimension is comprised of the behaviors that display the emotional component
and is the part of loyalty that changes the most.The first step is to redefine loyalty as internal feelings that
can be manifested in a variety of new ways. Instead, what happens most often is that the leaders of an
organization feel that they are very loyal to their employees and that the organization has policies in place to
reflect that-but that workers don't understand what management is trying to do. On the other hand,
employees who feel they are very loyal to their companies aren't demonstrating it in ways management understands. The terms of the loyalty are far different from what they were in the past. Rather than a blind
corporate allegiance, employees show their commitment through their efforts for the organization.