Reward demonstrations of loyalty

We hear a lot today about managing for loyalty. Managers are supposed to look for employees who will be committed to an organization’s beliefs and who will selflessly go above and beyond the call of duty to achieve the organization’s ends.

Think of organizational Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts who don’t even want a merit badge for helping your distressed customer across a raging information highway. Sounds good, but is this realistic?

We recently traveled on business on airline tickets that got screwed up going and coming, and we ended up with a lot of time to talk with two of the ticket agents on each end who finally solved our problems. The way they did so tells you a lot about what people really will do for your organization and its customers.

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Both agents initially spent time determining the nature of the problem and, presumably, contemplating a range of potential solutions. Before they proposed specific alternatives to us, though, each of the agents did something interesting: They talked with us about their personal situation at work.

The outbound ticket agent was leaving for vacation at the end of her shift, which had become hellish as the airline canceled several flights for “mechanical reasons.” She was dealing with irate customers and had little good information about equipment and seats. We talked with her for a while about the kind of problems she had to deal with at work and her impending vacation.

After the conversation finished she proposed several reasonable solutions, and we proposed one of our own, all of which had in common that they would get us to our destination, keep us reasonably satisfied customers of the airline and cost the airline some money. The last thing she did before leaving on vacation was to override all kinds of systems to make one of these alternatives work out.

Returning proved more difficult, as some person or computer in a reservations center undid the changes that the ticket agent had made in Denver. As we stood at a West Coast airport talking with the ticket agent, she told us that the things that she could do to help us inevitably ended up with her getting yelled at by a gate agent. As she considered her options, she said, “It’s too bad that it’s like everyone here is working for a different company,” reflecting on the fact that we had not been able to get one straight solution and that she might have to fight with a co-worker to get us on a plane.

We talked with her about the difficulties of working in that way, the similarities and differences of her previous employer and the fact that she had taken this job to be able to retire in her hometown instead of taking a forced transfer from her last employer. When that conversation concluded, she said “I’m just going to make that change I told you about.” She handed us tickets that solved our problem, kept us satisfied customers and cost the company money.

What was going on in each of these exchanges? Exactly what researchers at Cornell University predicted from research on “organizational citizenship behaviors.” People don’t do favors for organizations, they do them for people. Specifically, people will only help out their organization once without receiving a reward.

After that, they expect that extra work and effort will be rewarded. People do help out the people who are their co-workers: You are probably more likely to do some extra work for a co-worker whose spouse has just died than you are to do so for the organization that won’t pay for your meals on the road.

We surmise, from our recent experience, that workers also do favors for the people who are an organization=s customers. Not for the organization, for the people.

In our case, give both of the agents credit: They acted in the long-term strategic interests of the airline by keeping our business and our client’s business and in the face of intense short-term operational pressure to do otherwise. But the immediate motivation to do so seemed to occur as a result of developing a personal, albeit temporary, connection with us as people.

One of us once had an assistant who taught us this principle. After several days of unexpected requests to work late as we prepared for a big presentation, we asked her to stay late again the night before the presentation to get things finished up. “If you want me to help you out,” she said, “I will do it as your friend, but I will not do it as your employee.”

She was right. Favors are for friends, good turns are for Scouts. Exceptional performance demands from you exceptional commitment to your employees.

On Management, written in cooperation with The Center for Human Function & Work (CHF&W) in Boulder, examines critical issues about managing the human side of a business. Joe Rosse is associate professor of management at CU-Boulder and an associate of the CHF&W. Bob Levin is director of the CHF&W. Comments, questions and topics are encouraged and can be mailed to The Business Report or e-mailed to Joseph.Rosse@Colorado.Edu.