Loyalty in the Workplace

In my previous blog, I described a Trapped employee.  Now the questions becomes, what do you do with Trapped employees?  Well it depends (how is that for a solid answer), it depends on who is Trapped.  For example, hospitals today may have to trap their nurses in order to keep them.  Without the necessary nursing staff, hospitals run the risk of not being able to utilize all of their beds or they could overwork their staff which could lead to a host of other problems.  Now ideally, the nurses would be Truly Loyal to the hospital (want to be there and plan to stay) but hospitals might throw money (which is a great way to trap somebody) at the nurses in order to get them to stay, even when they may want to leave. 

Organizations can make improvements in the organization that will make the company a better place to work.  This will in turn move the Trapped employees to the Truly Loyal category as they no longer feel neutral or negative about the organization but realize how great the company is and thus, they want to be part of the organization. 

Finally, I have clients that I have worked with that may try to help some of the Trapped employees "graduate" from the company.  In some cases either it is just not a fit, or they just aren't a good employee.  In either case, sometimes the best scenario for the organization and the employee is to help them move on to another opportunity.