The issue of loyalty is one of the bigger generations tensions in the workplace, and no matter what industry you work in, it tends to follow the same basic pattern, and endless cycle of older, more experienced people bemoaning the lack of loyalty they see in their younger and less-experienced colleagues. This tension is as old as time.
But is it true? Well, let’s do some digging.
First let’s talk about attachment. Everyone on the planet, minus the very occasional hermit, is looking for a community of people to attach to. And there is a healthy body of research suggesting that the vast majority of us are only looking to attach in a deep, meaningful way to approximately 150 people at any given time. This concept is called Dunbar’s number, and there are decades of studies to support it.
In the past few decades, however, there has been a huge shift in the way we find that 150-person community. Up until the 1980s, people everywhere, myself included, grew up in an era without constant connections – because the technologies that allow for constant connections simply didn’t exist. And because the world lacked constant connections, everyone who grew up in that world found their meaningful relationships in their neighborhoods or schools. A few hundred people, maybe a couple thousand – that was the size of the world. And when that’s the size of the world you live in, finding a few dozen people who make you feel like you belong somewhere is a comparatively easy task.
But for today’s young people, who have always had the ability to access everything from everywhere, their world has always been global. And when the size of your world is billions of people, finding a few dozen who make you feel connected and important is harder. It’s not impossible, but it’s harder. It’s a psychological phenomenon known as the Poverty of Choice, which essentially means that the more options we have, the harder it is to choose between those options.
There are two things to take away from this massive shift. The first is that, despite this undeniable revolution in the way that we interact with each other, everyone everywhere is looking for a community to attach to and be loyal to – that hasn’t changed, it never will, and it’s equally true no matter what age we are. But second, and more importantly for this conversation, the shift from living in a local community to a global one has made the process of finding those connections more difficult for today’s young people than it was for us older people when we were their age. And as a result of that increased difficulty, younger people tend to attach very tightly once they decide to do it.
You want proof of that? I happen to have some. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, today’s 25-34 year-olds are more loyal in terms of workplace tenure – that means they have been at their jobs for longer – than any group of 25-34 year-olds since at least 1963. In other words, today’s 20-somethings are more loyal than today’s 50-somethings were when they were young. And if you happen to be 52 or 63 and don’t believe me, do me a favor. Go find any photo of you from your early 20s. Because there’s not a single one of them where you look employable. The average person born between 1957 and 1964 had an average of 5.5 jobs between the ages of 18-24. That’s basically one new job a year. Not all that loyal, is it?
So the truth is that today’s young people do want to be loyal, just like everyone else, and when they finally decide to be loyal, they offer that loyalty very strongly. So now, if you’re on the older side of things, you might be asking, “Well if that’s really the case, why does it feel like young people today aren’t loyal?” And that leads to probably the most important concept to understand if you want to attract and retain a loyal workforce.
Loyalty is something that is earned and cannot be assumed.
I cannot overstate how important it is to understand this. None of us are instinctively loyal to anything. Babies aren’t even instinctively loyal to their parents. We learn loyalty as babies when we are loved and cared for – but if you take a baby away from its birth parents and give it to adoptive parents, they’ll become loyal to those people instead. If you’re currently married, you were not instinctively loyal to your spouse. You decided to be loyal to that person after a period of weeks or months or even years before making your lifelong commitment. And none of us are instinctively loyal to our employers.
If you consider yourself to be a loyal worker, it’s almost certainly because your colleagues or employer did something, probably several somethings, to earn your loyalty. They gave you opportunity, taught you some skills, offered some friendships, paid you enough to support yourself and your family, introduced you to new people or interests, gave you something meaningful to work on, kept you on when times were tough – maybe one of these, maybe all of these, and maybe some things I didn’t mention. But whatever happened, they gave you a reason to decide to be loyal.
But today’s young workers and new hires are still trying to decide where to place their loyalty, and they want to know that they’re making a good decision. In the last couple decades we’ve seen an enormous surge in outsourcing, automation, the reduction or elimination of pensions, the rise of the gig economy with an almost complete absence of benefits and worker protections, and that has very understandably made today’s young people skeptical of putting their loyalty anywhere that doesn’t offer some decent guarantees. Older people have a tendency to expect young people to offer hard work and dedication right off the bat, without any question or hesitation. But it shouldn’t be that surprising to learn that young people want some honest assurances that they’re going to be rewarded for their hard work before blindly offering it.
Now let me be clear. You cannot create a work ethic in people that don’t have one. That is a separate issue. But you can create an environment that will inspire people to look at you and what you’re offering and say to themselves, “These people care about me. This place is offering me a home.” Most of us are looking for that, and if you provide that to your employees and colleagues – young, old, and everything in between – then they’ll be excited to give you the dedication and loyalty you’re looking for.
