What did I learn from a billionaire about running a successful business? An important fact about employee loyalty that all entrepreneurs must know.

In Vancouver, Canada, there’s a billionaire named Jim Patterson and he was quoted to have said building a company on high turnover is like building a company on quicksand.

That’s it right there. Employee loyalty is everything.

If you’re building a company and you have high employee turnover, your company is literally on quicksand. You will not last in the competitive marketplace with employees that are turning over at a high level.

It’s the efficiency that you achieve from having an employee loyal to your company. Someone who is growing with you through thick and thin, someone who knows your company inside out.

That is irreplaceable. That is priceless. You can’t buy that.

If people are leaving out the door, you’re bringing new people in, you’re having to retrain them, there’s all this inefficiency, there’s this shaky foundation, so the message I want you to take today is treat your employees well.

If you’re the type of leader who motivates through fear and intimidation, and you constrict your employees’ freedom and autonomy, and breathe down their neck and micromanage, that is a recipe for failure.

In the book Drive by Daniel Pink, he discovered that we are innately motivated by three things in the workplace:

  • Autonomy
  • Mastery
  • Purpose

If you can give your employees those three things, you are miles ahead of the majority of businesses out there when it comes to the workplace and what you are offering your employees as true incentives. It’s not big, cozy salaries or a corner desk that creates loyalty.

Do they have autonomy?

It’s not massive salaries and bonuses that create employee loyalty. Yeah, you might get some good performance for a short while.

Not if that employee does not have the feeling of self-direction, the feeling of control in their life coming to work for you.

Do they have mastery?

If they don’t have the feeling of mastery, that means they don’t have the feeling of growing towards something and getting better at. What it is they’re doing, not stuck in some stagnant position with a low ceiling on their head where they have no room for growth.

If instead, they have the room to grow, they have a clear plan on how to grow within your company, and you provide for them, that as a business owner, again, sets you worlds ahead of the competition and the job marketplace.

Do they have purpose?

If you can provide your employees with a grander purpose to the work that they’re doing, to create more than a job for them but an actual mission and a vision towards working towards something, making the world a better place in some capacity, that is how you foster true loyalty and high-level performance from talented people.

So, remember, guys: autonomy, mastery and purpose. That is how you attract high-level people and keep them loyal.

As Jim Patterson said, without that loyalty, you are in quicksand.

 

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