Associate Write/ Historian
For the most part in this day and age we have no loyalty to our employers as well as no loyalty to the employees anymore. There are several reasons for this problem such as, most of our better paying jobs like manufacturing has left this country and we can thank our government regulations through the EPA and others for driving them out.
With modern smog control systems in place today there is no reason to place even more regulations upon these companies but the "greenie" groups and the EPA continue to do so. After all, they have to justify their jobs.
The employees who work for many of the corporations today have no loyalty for several reasons. Reasons such as, only being able to work part time because of the corporations high cost of insurance. Full time employees are expected to carry an overly heavy work load in many cases because of the lack of hiring enough people at the full time positions.
One of the main reasons for the lack of loyalty is how badly employees are treated by their superiors. The outlook by many employers today is simple, if you don't like it there are many others out there who would gladly take your job.
On the other side, Employers have a hard time finding good employees today because many (not all) young people coming into the work force from college or anywhere else seem to think they are owed top wages right from the start, and many of them do not have much of a work ethic.
Now don't get me wrong, I have seen some young people who work hard but many are not willing to do so because they were handed to many things, to easily, by their parents, so they believe they are entitled. When most people my age wanted something from their parents we either had to work for it or do certain chores to deserve those things, it's called, teaching work ethic.
How many times have you witnessed parents today rewarding bad behavior? A kid will throw a tantrum in a store because he or she wants something and the parent will give it to them, or the kid was told to do something and wouldn't do it, but the parent will take them to a movie or other functions anyway. We need to stop rewarding bad behavior and only reward good behavior because rewarding bad behavior is not doing them any favors for when they get old enough to enter the work force.
As far as the employers go, many of them need to learn that if they treat their employees the way they themselves would want to be treated they would find that their employees would be much happier, which in the long run, will up their production because the employees will work harder for someone who treats them well. Sure, some people, no matter how well you treat them, will take advantage of the situation. Those people are the one's you fire, period!
I personally know these things to be true. I have been a supervisor and I always treated the people under me as equals. Sure, I had to fire a few people here and there but for the most part I had great employees who went over and above on their own because they enjoyed their job and enjoyed being treated well.
When I noticed that one area of the job had an overly amount of people quitting, I looked at the foreman. In the majority of cases the foreman was a jack ass so I fired him which put a more harmonious situation in place which also raised production.
CEOs and the like need to learn this lesson if they want a better class of employee and a better production rate. Sometimes only looking at the bottom line can actually cost a company money. It's my opinion that attitudes on both sides have to change in order to gain loyalty back in the work place, it's not just one sided.
I don't know about you, but that's the way I see it.
Terry McGahey
