Loyal customer is great, how about your employee loyalty ?

I used to work for Satyam computers between 2004-2007. Head of the unit was called AIC - Associate in Charge that means he is responsible for Associate, Investor, Customer. What happened to Satyam was a different story, but what I want to talk about today is Loyalty. Don't tell me the quote, get a dog if you want loyalty, tigers doesn't work for loyalty.

We will focus on the concept of Loyalty in terms of AIC (Associate, Investor, Customer). Lot of companies focused on customer loyalty. The culture and principles of these companies are fully focused on customer loyalty only. Investors are happy because of the growth and you got lot of long term investors. The only way Associates are happy is because of the stocks they received and the growth they saw in those stocks. So your Associates are indirectly happy investors. This worked so far, but with COVID19 it started testing this theory of keeping your Customer and investors happy and making your associates happy indirectly as they are kind of investors.

First the investors shares lost 20% value due to market fluctuation, this is average calculation for a successful company which is NOT directly hit by COVID19. Let's take out Hospitality, Restaurants and airlines out of this equation. For that matter you can only focus on retail examples. Your investors are NOT really comfortable and that means the hike you promised to your employees in terms of share growth is gone out of the window. That made Investors and Associates little bit worried, let's assume they still have high confidence that things will turn around. All these years you made lot of operational adjustments, pinched pennies from associates to thrill customers and investors. Here we have the situation where everybody is concerned and their loyalty is at test.

What if slowly these associates who are NOT happy with your policies all this while start jumping out of ship right when you need them. That breaks your chain of Customer->Associate->Investor. Without associates loyalty you can NOT provide the same level of customer satisfaction and all the customers who got used to your thrills, are they still going to have the same loyalty if you are NOT going to provide the same kind of service ? Is that going to cause break trust in your investors ? These questions can only be answered by prolonged COVID19 situation.

How quickly you can adjust your strategy and win your employee satisfaction is going to dictate your success with customers and investors. This can not be done overnight, hopefully you were making investment into this trust from last few years. Now with COVID19 the situation changed drastically, employees watching your supply chain, stores, deliveries are more important to keep your Investors and customers hanging with you. It was always the case but employee moved to the central piece of the puzzle instead of customers. With high unemployment rate , you have potential employees available in the market but are they skilled enough to take the position of your veteran employees quickly ?