Workers Less Likely To Pledge Allegiance
By Dave Melendl© Pasadena Star-News. September 23, 2001
Three out of four U.S. workers don’t want to be with their current organization in two years, according to a recently released study that paints a dire portrait of the nation’s workplace and employee loyalty.
Only about half of the country’s workforce would recommend their firm to others looking for a job, believe their company treats employees fairly or that it wants to develop people for long-term careers, according to the study by Walker Information Inc., an Indianapolis-based research and consulting firm.
“We have communicated to the labor market something of a schizoid mentality,” said Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan and Associates, a Pasadena-based executive search and consulting firm. “We have communicated to the labor market this concept that people are expendable, that people are not much different than office supplies.”
Kaplan traces the roots of the trend to the 1980s when many corporations merged and consolidated and a recession hit the Northeast and Midwest in the latter part of the decade that the country did not recover from until the early 1990s.
“When we climbed out of it, corporate leadership became obsessed with shareholder value, possibly with some level of greed,” he said. “It was a period of tremendous reengineering. Do more with less.”
That led to, on a broad macro level, the end of corporate loyalty, Kaplan said.
“What we created here in America is a nation of mercenaries, and you can’t blame them.”
Kaplan qualifies his statements, though, noting that the study of 2,795 workers nation-wide was done before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“There’s a whole new sort of fervor in the country right now. It may not be only patriotism, but may transcend over to loyalty to other institutions.”
The lack of employee loyalty hurts companies in a variety of ways, said Marc Dirzin, vice president of Walker Information.
“There’s no doubt that there’s a connection between an employee’s level of commitment to a company and his or her job performance,” Dirzin said. “Looking even deeper in this study, our research shows that low levels of employee loyalty and retention ultimately affect a company’s relationships with its customers and affects the bottom line.”
Smooch Reynolds, president of The Repovich-Reynolds Group, a Pasadena-based executive search firm, agreed.
“When employees are dissatisfied, they are distracted from their job,” she said. “A distracted employee means a less productive employee. In a highly satisfied, fully engaged employment force, the productivity is exponentially greater.”
But should the economy falter, Reynolds said, that could lead more people to stay at their jobs out of fear of the unknown.
“Any time the economy slows, I think most people hunker down in the position they are in if for no other reason than security. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
Gerald Mathews, managing principal for Right Management Consultants in Pasadena, an executive career and human resources consulting firm, said he believes the current workplace climate was caused by the “intersection of Generation X and the fact that the drive for shareholder value and productivity was at such an all important high.”
