On Loyalty, Community and Staying Employed

There has been a lot of earnest dialogue lately about company loyalty, and how employees just don't seem to have it anymore. Job-hopping has become the norm, it seems, and retaining quality staff has become a serious issue, something completely unexpected in this new global labor market. Full employment is hard to find these days; with wages being driven down and the cost of living spiralling you'd think those lucky to be fully employed would be more loyal, not less.

But the truth is, in the corporate world loyalty has always been a one-sided affair. The employee is loyal to his company, willing to go the extra mile and make whatever sacrifices are needed to ensure the company's success, yet respectful of the needs of the company. When asked to make the ultimate sacrifice the employee goes quietly, not taking it personally, knowing they were employed at-will and when the company stopped the music their chair would be gone. The company pretends loyalty to its employees by presenting the possibility of a long-term relationship, with a gold watch, a pension and something better than the county rest home at the end, but is never really expected to deliver.

I really don't think it's possible to be loyal to a company. A company is a ghost. All actions taken, positive and negative, are taken by people on behalf of an idea called a company. The "company" is a buffer that allows them to do things they might otherwise not do if they were directly accountable for the consequences. Claiming it was "the needs of the business" or the "company" that ended your ability to participate in the local economy is simply a way for people live with the damage they've done to their friends and co-workers in choosing their livelihood for elimination.

Believe it or not, I'm OK with this. The truth is that in matters of survival each one of us will choose ourself and our families over someone else, so anyone with a conscience will look for a higher reason for pulling the switch on their friends or neighbors. What I'm NOT OK with is the elaborate lengths we've gone to to avoid admitting this simple fact: Employment is survival, and you can't get more personal than that. Whether being offered a job or shown the door you have been chosen personally by other people. At that moment it doesn't matter what they were acting on behalf of or how the decision was reached, what matters is that a person looked at a list of names and selected you personally to either be used or rejected.

The big surprise for me was that once I acknowledged this, once it sank in and I surrendered to the fact of it, staying employed became a fight I could maybe win. I was also able to become a truly loyal employee -- not to the company, but to my colleagues and co-workers, which IMHO is where proper loyalty should be placed.

This is an iceberg issue, though. Getting the participants of the business world to honor the human component of Human Resources with the vigor devoted to the resource component is just a part of it. I think if you peel back enough layers you'll discover that the real cause of all the discontent is that people in general are getting lonely. Look around you and try to find someone whose perceptual back isn't turned, either by their Blackberry or their iPod or cell phone, or the ghost world of the "workplace culture". Visit one of the new mini-mall Town Centers after 8:00PM any evening and you'll find dark streets and empty buildings. The Town Center idea is another bit of collective untruth -- these places aren't built for people to congregate, they're built to bring customers in close proximity to products and we all know this at some level. We don't even talk about people much anymore -- consumers, customers, resources, it doesn't really matter if they're humans or not as long as they have money to be parted with.

We've allowed the daily direct casual connection with other humans that's the foundation of a real culture to be almost completely severed in the name of commerce. To be fair, though, there are some bright spots. I was hanging around our local mini-mall Town Center the other day thinking about this when I noticed a group of 10 or 15 Goth kids sitting around the outdoor firepit-cum-billboard. They were all engaged and interconnected on a level totally unrelated to the purpose of the locale. The little bastards figured out that they wouldn't be run off as long as a couple of them were holding cups from the local coffee bar, which rendered them indistinguishable from actual customers to the security guys. That was more community than I've seen anywhere in the grownup world in a long time, and I wanted to sit down and talk too but the Chains&Studs Hut was closed and I looked too much like somebody's Dad. Maybe next time.

I'm not an axe-grinder, bleeding-heart or streetcorner politician, and I'm not lamenting, just observing. And I'm going to stop here because my point is made. Those of you who are still with me, thank you for listening -- this has been on my mind lately and needed to see the light of day.

Now go outside and talk to somebody.

Peace,
Robert