Well, hey, everybody. It’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we will explore the question, is employee loyalty dead?

Let’s talk about employee loyalty. Recently, on our WhizBang! Retailers Facebook group, somebody posted a question.

She had a good employee, actually, as a manager, women’s clothing store, who requested two blocks of time off in December.

And although when this, manager was hired, it was in the employee manual that that was a blackout date, you know, from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Nobody can request time off. This person clearly had something going on and was adamant that she needed the time off. And it’s sponsor it it sparked this whole conversation about employee loyalty.

Lots of great points.

But here’s how I look at it, is I see it that employees are never your team members are never going to care about your business the way that you care about your business.

And I see this mistaken mentality often. The mentality of, this is how I did it.

This is how they should do it. I’m a baby boomer. And when I got my first job at Taco Bell, when the minimum wage was, wait for it, a dollar thirty an hour, I was happy to have the job. I was happy to do exactly what they told me to do because that’s the way that things were done.

The world doesn’t operate that way anymore, and I’m happy about that. You know, people now have choices.

And so when I ask the question, is employee loyalty dead? I think the answer, like last week’s Real Retail TV, is customer loyalty dead? The answer is no. It’s not dead, but it has to be earned. It has to be earned every day and in every way.

The assumption that if you pay someone that they’re going to be loyal, that they’re going to do what you want them to do is just faulty thinking.

So, you know, the conversation that happened on our WhizBang retail group is, look, something’s going on.

You have to have a conversation.

But the idea that this is our policy, this is the way we do it. If you don’t do it this way, you don’t have a job, I think is an outmoded mentality.

So one of the things that I’m encouraging you to recognize when we say loyalty employee loyalty isn’t dead, but it has to be earned, is the understanding that even your best team members will go someplace else if there is a better offer.

And you can’t be upset.

You can’t be mad. Again, they work for you. They are not your partner. They are not emotionally or financially invested like you’re invested.

So just recognize that this is a fact of life that you can and should do everything you can to make them happy, to make them loyal, to make them feel included, to make them feel like they matter.

But at the end of the day, they’re going to do what’s best for them, not you.

And that’s okay.

Now having said that, it points to another essential truth.

That because the labor market is much more fluid, because people will leave quicker before they will leave more easily.

It is on you to become a better recruiter, to be have a tighter, more condensed onboarding process, to be a better trainer. So while you’re doing everything you can to make the team members you have as good as possible, as quickly as possible, You want to have a strong bench. You wanna have people ready to come in. You wanna be able to fire up your recruiting engine in a hurry to get people in, to get them on board, and to get them trained so that they give your customers the experience they deserve when they are in a store like yours.

So employee loyalty is not dead, but it is not what it once was, and you as a smart retailer must adjust accordingly.