What management can do to gain staff loyalty

Staff loyalty is always important to the management, as productivity could be highly affected by staff turnover.

Apart from financial rewards, do you know what the staff are looking for in order to work happily and remain loyal to the organization? Here are some of my experience and observation to share with you.

1. Empowerment

Empowerment is a form of trust to the staff. Staff, especially of higher level, will be happy to have more control over their work and time schedule. A good staff will just need the manager to tell them what he/she want them to do, the expected result, and the deadline. The rest should be managed by themselves.

Only if the manager does not have enough trust on the staff, then he/she need to tell the staff how to do, closely check on the work progress, and try to monitor the time with tools such as time clock, timesheet, etc. Well, it is true that not every staff can work with minimal supervision, but for those quality staff that can really work with minimal supervision, you can actually gain their loyalty with empowerment.

Do you agree that employee will not be happy with those time clock, timesheet, etc. unless related to financial rewards, such as for calculation of overtime wages? In fact, most people will work more hours if they can have some control over when they actually have to work. Check this out with those companies that introduced flexi-hour scheme.

Management should work towards the direction to develop the staff such that they can be trusted and empowered. If this can be achieved, the management can even save operational cost by introducing telecommuting, allowing staff to work at home.

2. Relationship

It is not deniable that we have people that we like to work with, and we also have people that we dislike to work with.

When forming a project team, by putting people that are "compatible" to each other, you are actually promoting a good teamwork which can optimize the productivity as well as gaining their loyalty.

Management should work towards the direction to form teams with good relationship, and resolve any relationship issue once detected. You will have strong bonding teams working loyally for you then.

3. Task assignment

Every staff have their talent in something, or interest in something. If you put the right staff in the right place, assigning them with task that they are keen on, you can not only expect to get good result, but also boost up the staff loyalty.

Management should work towards the direction to develop the staff to love their job. If you tend to put the wrong staff in the wrong place, probably you will have a higher turnover rate.

4. Training and event

Staff will be always grateful if you send them for training and event that they are interested of. In addition, you can also earn gratitude from your staff by providing them opportunity to conduct training or to give talk in event, for them to share their talented knowledge to others.

5. Convenience

Let the staff have a peace of mind about their car parking place at work, their work place, tools and resources they need for work, food and refreshment, etc.

For outstation staff or expatriates, the management should also take good care of their accomodation, transport, Internet access, etc.

Some companies even provide nursery service, sport facilities, etc. to their staff.

It is not difficult to observe that convenience plays an important role in retaining staff loyalty and attracting new staff.

Do you agree with me on the above 5 points?