QotD: Employee Loyalty

Do you believe that employee loyalty still exists in today's work environment? How loyal are you as an employee to your company or boss?
Submitted by Jessmiloo.

I think this question has been asked backwards.  The proper question should be "How loyal are employers to their employees?".

Once upon a time, most employers looked upon their employees as the company's most valuable resource and treated them as such.   Employers gave generous benefits: sufficient personal time off, adequate health insurance, generous Christmas bonuses, reasonable, regular working hours as in incentive to retain experienced, competent employees.  

As such, many people of my father's generation stayed with their jobs until they retired with a gold watch and a generous pension for retirement.  They were loyal to their employers and coworkers.

My father, who worked for a major oil corporation from the time he got out of the Navy right after World War II until his retirement in the mid-80s saw the workplace atmosphere change for the worse over the course of his years with his employer.  When he first began, he enjoyed his job and thought of his workplace as a home away from home, where his employers treated him with decency and consideration.

Toward the end of his career, his became disgusted with his employer, as he saw employees increasingly treated with less consideration and less care over the years.   He himself, ending up retiring early, swept out by a plan to get rid of older workers so that they could be replaced by younger people with less experience who could be paid less.   After more than thirty years of sterling employee reviews, he got his first bad review of his career shortly before his retirement, despite doing his job as he'd always done it.

His experience isn't unique, unfortunately.   Nowadays, most employers view employees as merely a business expense and, in the interests of making as much money as possible, give the employees as little as they can legally get by with, while at the same time demanding they work longer hours with irregular schedules.  Knowing that there are scores of people waiting to take each employee's job, many employers view employees as disposable diapers -- to use up, then throw away when they are longer profitable to the company.  

Benefits have shrunk, and in many jobs, nonexistent.   Those still offering sick leave, offer fewer days -- my last job offered only 4 days per year compared to the 18 I got when I was on the police force in the mid 80s.   47 million Americans have no health insurance at all, and for those who still get it, they have to pay more for it and get less in return.  Christmas bonuses are quickly becoming a thing of the past and a gold watch at retirement seems like a quaint thing to people now.  Many employers routinely expect their employees to work longer than 40 hours a week and often, on irregular, rotating schedules that are never the same from week to week.  They essentially expect employees to be on call at all times.

If anyone complains, they are told, "You're just lucky to have a jooooooooooob!".

So, is it any wonder that few employees feel much loyalty to their employers?  Nowadays, one can fairly accurately gauge how employees are treated at any given company by researching the company's turnover rate.   Employers who have a revolving door turnover rate who are always advertising for help is a pretty sure sign that employees are treated as disposable there and companies who rarely have openings are the ones who still adhere to the old-fashioned ethic of viewing employees as valuable resources.

It's just too bad there are now too many employers of the first kind and too few of the second.