Foster Employee Loyalty
Is your company doing what it can to create and foster employee loyalty? Profitability is one of the most important traits of a successful company. Creating a culture that promotes employee engagement and supports the company’s mission and vision can be a competitive advantage in good and difficult times.
A positive employee experience encompasses several factors, including compensation, benefits, strong leadership, and open communication channels. One factor that has risen in recent years is purpose. According to Great Places to Work research, purpose is the degree employees feel their work has meaning and correlates to their engagement.
Michael Bush, Great Places To Work CEO, said, “No one should be surprised by this. Purpose might be the word of 2022. What do employees want? That. It’s on every leader to make sure every worker, regardless of role and location, understands how what they do affects your organization’s greater purpose. They need to know their work has meaning and matters—that they matter.”
In 2021, the highest US company on the Best Places to Work list, and number two overall, is Cisco Systems. As highlighted by Daniel Goleman in a Korn Ferry article, Cisco was cited as having excellent benefits, strong diversity commitment, and a “hyper-focus” on employee wellness. And Cisco has nearly 80,000 employees.
Cisco’s purpose statement, “Power and Inclusive Future for All”, is far more ambitious than something focusing only on the technology sector. Cisco’s executive vice president and chief legal officer, Dev Stahlkoph, said the purpose statement is “palpable in the company’s culture. It means we share our technology and expertise to better the lives of those in our community. It means we partner with other organizations to address problems, such as global hunger. Looking inward, we want to unleash the full power of our employees to help ensure the company realizes its purpose.”
And the research backs up her statement. “The report shows a stark commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals and lays out the company’s evolving progress on everything from lowering emissions to getting more women and minorities into leadership. There isn’t one clear way Cisco “powers an inclusive future for all.” Instead, there are a variety of initiatives they have started and tracked throughout the years, including giving each employee 40 hours of paid time off to volunteer each year—a full week of time they can dedicate to the causes they’re most passionate about.”
And they are not alone. KPMG’s “Higher Purpose Initiative” asked employees to share stories on how their work has enabled them to make a positive difference in the world. VMWare started the “Good Gigs” program to integrate employees’ passions with their professional growth and opportunities to give back, providing extended time off to volunteer.
Korn Ferry’s Line of Sight report notes that we relate to work in three specific ways: “a job for tangible benefits, a career that advances power and social standing, or a vocation toward self-fulfillment.”
Per the Goleman article, “When a company, like Cisco, gets clear on their purpose and develops the initiatives and goals to actualize it, they create an environment where people not only get to secure their livelihood, but can also gain traction on their more far-reaching hopes and ambitions.”
If you still have doubt, 97% of Cisco’s employees agree with the statement, “I feel good about the ways we contribute to the community.” And while the great resignation has hit almost every company over the past year, Cisco has kept its attrition rate below 10%.
If you would like to create a culture that fosters employee loyalty, send us a note.