Bank employee loyalty under pressure
Will I be needed here in three years? The banks are not good enough at keeping bank employees’ traditionally high loyalty. This is what Mikkel Korntved, CEO of Loyalty Group believes.
“The banks have failed to work seriously with employee values. The values that help create and maintain employee loyalty in a company”.
Mikkel Korntved is CEO and senior partner of the Loyalty Group, which has worked with loyalty over 25 years in a number of industries, including the financial sector.
His assessment is that the banks are cutting off one of the thickest and most valuable branches on their own tree:
“It’s about customer loyalty, which is linked to employee loyalty. Neither part has been taken care of”.
Build on the loyalty
Bank employees have traditionally been considered loyal employees. But companies cannot continue to eat away at the loyalty without building on it. And that is what has been happening in the financial institutions for a long time, he believes.
“There is a great deal of uncertainty in the financial sector. What does it do for the employees to not know for sure whether they will be needed in two or three years? That’s not a fun future to look towards”.
Employees who are loyal to their workplace can create loyal customer contacts. But employee loyalty does not happen by itself:
“It comes from a good workplace with good colleagues. When you get right down to it, employees are loyal to their colleagues not the bank itself”.
Therefore, we need to work with employee values to inspire and create loyalty. This work with values partly has to do with looking at the individual, he explains:
“The individual needs to feel valuable. There is way too much focus on digitalisation. There needs to be more room for the human being”.