Page 162 - Successful Onboarding

Personal Progress and Prospect: Early Career Support • 149

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times return they head to the door. Employee loyalty, in other words, has
been utterly smashed. As employees, new hires are loyal to themselves—
happy to give value to the enterprise, but only commensurate to what
the organization returns back. The absence of organizational loyalty is
reflected in a recent survey of 1,400 CIOs (the leadership group that over-
sees the greatest concentration of knowledge workers in our economy);
43% put retaining existing workers as their top priority in 2010. A great
number of professional workers today are not even employees anymore,
but part of the large and growing body of independent contractors and
freelancers who sell themselves to the highest bidder for discrete projects.
Other numbers relating to loyalty are well known but worth repeating.
As of 2005, Americans were projected to change jobs an average of 10
times between the ages of 18 and 37. More recent surveys taken during
the global recession that began at the end of 2007 indicate widespread dis-
content with employers and specific jobs. One 2009 survey of 900 work-
ers found that 60% intended to leave their present jobs and pursue new
8
opportunities as the economy pulled out of recession. Almost 60% of
workers in another recent survey reported that “work pressures were under-
mining their health,” whereas almost 80% of high-level employees
reported “high levels of stress, more than twice as high as one year earlier.”
A full 40% felt that relations with spouses and partners were suffering as a
9
result of their jobs. One partner at a New York law firm summarized the
situation: “The loyalty of the institution to its people, and vice versa, isn’t
really there anymore—it’s a different animal from what a lot of us were
used to.” 10
If the employer-employee compact stands in disarray, starting a con-
versation and providing support beginning at the point of entry into the
enterprise serves as a promising way to reset and redefine it. Disloyal work-
ers did not become that way because of their preference for independence;
rather, they were forced to take matters in their own hands as the idea of
the corporation as a benevolent caretaker proved weak and unreliable.
Pursuing long-term career progress has become a key priority for workers
of all ages. According to one recent study, Gen Y and Boomers were look-
ing beyond a paycheck and aiming at personal and career growth. The
study found that members of the two generations placed other benefits—
including “challenging assignments,” “a range of new experiences,” and
“explicit performance evaluations and recognition”—higher than money.