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Loyalty. Insert your favourite quote.

Writer's picture: Stephanie KirkStephanie Kirk

There's a lot out there about creating loyalty between employers and teams. Specifically, employees and the brands they work for. Often a Branson, Sinek or a Jobs quote about it will be thrown into Town Hall keynotes. 


Thing is, you can’t sum up what loyalty really means, or how to foster it, in a single quote.


There is one I do enjoy, which is ‘You’ve got to give loyalty down, if you want loyalty up’. This is attributed to Donald T.Regan, who I had to look up as I’m not up on my US political history (he sounds only marginally more decent a chap than other prominent Donalds available, but still, his quote is nice).


As much as I’m trying to get away from the hierarchical employer/employee terminology of ‘up’ and ‘down’, you know what he means instantly. And he’s not wrong. For an employer to expect any kind of loyalty from their team, they need to have their team’s backs.


Like respect and trust, loyalty is built, and goes two ways. 


But, what kind of loyalty are we really looking for? When interviewed by a large drinks brand, years ago, I was asked how loyal I was to the brand. Did I consume it on a regular basis? Would I choose it over other alternatives on the market? Would I recommend it to friends? I said ‘Oh yes’ because I was fresh out of uni and wanted a job. And they gave me it. And I left three months later.




The context to that was, I did drink their product, regularly, but once I’d worked for them for a few weeks it became very quickly clear I could not be loyal to them as a company. The culture was so at odds with who I was then (and still am), and until I’d spent time with them, and got to know how their team operated, how could they expect my loyalty?*


Later, I worked for a business owner who practically demanded loyalty, even to the point of throwing a hissy fit when someone was offered a job elsewhere. They would ask ‘how are these people so disloyal?’. But that person confused loyalty with gratefulness. They expected that if they simply paid staff and gave them statutory benefits, then the team should be grateful enough to stay.


I’m quite direct (I know, I come across as so demure!), because I want to make swift, positive change and do the right thing, and I feel that you have to have a strong enough relationship to be able to say ‘I disagree’ or ‘let’s do it differently’ to business leaders. But once, after a boardroom meeting where I’d pointed out some potential flaws in a strategy,  I was informed my candour showed a ‘lack of loyalty’. Again, loyalty was misunderstood, this time it was confused with constantly and blindly agreeing with the boss. 


Occasionally, I still hear from people about job interviews they’ve had when they were asked about being ‘loyal to the brand/company’, before they’ve even worked a day in their team. How can you ask people in an interview if they are going to be loyal to the brand when they've never experienced the culture of the brand’s workplace? So, really, this conversation should be flipped on its head and the interviewer should be demonstrating how they create a culture in which that candidate should one day feel loyalty to the brand and the company.


I’m not necessarily a brand-loyal person. If something else comes along that I want to try, or makes me feel better about connecting with, then I’m going to try it. So, today's request to employers is, don’t ask me to only be loyal only to the brand. Find ways for us to be loyal to each other.


Put it this way. If you give me a job and your brand is in the enterprise tech field, let’s build a healthy and positive culture together, with a loyalty factor which would mean that if you decided to start over, stop building tech, fully rebrand and start selling apples on the market, me and the rest of the team would still want to work with you enough to don a cap and start writing out signs saying '€2 per kilo'.


As a specific, good example, let’s talk about WeTransfer. Before I worked with their team, was I loyal to their product? I used it, liked it a lot, even implemented it as a tool of choice in my teams, but no, sometimes I would use other tools on offer. Then I interviewed there and learnt a lot about the ways they build culture and how they embrace being a BCorp and the CSR focus they have. This made me love the brand a lot more. Then I interviewed with my future boss, and came out of that saying to my partner ‘Oh my gosh, I want to work with that woman!’. This was a wonderful start to building loyalty.


Loyalty within your business is never just about employee/brand. You have to have the right people to build a community and culture in which loyalty, all ways, can thrive. And there is no one quote from any of the famous LinkedIn business big mouths that will give you the keys to building it!


Here are my main takes:

  • Focus on building a culture people want to work in

  • Don’t ask for loyalty from day one, candidates don’t know your culture first hand, you need to sell it to them! And many companies would also benefit from advertising their culture widely, as well as their products, so future candidates already have a sense of whether it fits

  • Create not just a culture, but a community, same way you build brands with clients, get your teams to become invested in your company’s success and not just happy to sit on the payroll

  • Try to be happy when someone moves on from the business - they could be a great ally for you wherever they go next (or, see also Richard Branson: ‘Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to’)

  • Never confuse honesty and candour for a lack of loyalty

  • See loyalty, trust and respect as a journey, and realise you need to build them, not demand them


*If you must know, their chief marketing person told us all the best form of subliminal advertising is 'litter, so next time you have a drink of <product>, throw the empty can on the ground.' Yes, really.


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