"Improving employee engagement directly impacts measurable business outcomes such as revenues and profits," said Kyle LaMalfa, Allegiance best practices and loyalty expert. "Employees who are committed to success, emotionally attached, and socially involved with a company are more productive at work, take less sick days and are less likely to leave. In short, engaged employees are the best employees."

Top Eleven Ways to Increase Employee Loyalty

1. First, Measure Employee Engagement - Start measuring employees' passion about work and the work environment by issuing an employee satisfaction survey. Employee satisfaction surveys using a scale of agreement (a Likert Scale) provide a quantitative measurement that can be combined with open-ended comments to identify opportunities to make employees happy.

2. Identify What Employees Like - By gathering compliments through employee satisfaction surveys in addition to concerns, your company can find out if its engagement efforts make a meaningful, lasting contribution to employees.

3. Help Employees See the Big Picture - Employees want to feel that they are contributing and making a difference. Help your employees to see the big picture and how they contribute to a functioning whole. This will also empower employees to make decisions and improve employee satisfaction.

4. Use Training to Increase Confidence - Managers who cut training budgets to save costs do not understand how service delivery and morale can suffer as a result. Employees need training to do their job confidently and to facilitate career advancement within the company.

5. Establish Mentoring Programs - Train and encourage seasoned employees to be mentors. A mentoring program can facilitate dynamic skill growth through an organization and foster a sense of community while improving employee satisfaction and employee engagement.

6. Promote Team Building - Encourage team building activities among employee groups to create trust and acceptance. Strong, loyal teams provide one level of acceptance, and teamwork between departments provides another.

7. Build a Supportive Environment - Often, dissatisfaction with wages and benefits masks problems that relate back to acceptance by a team or manager. Employees may need help with coping skills, problem-solving skills, tactics for handling difficult situations, or expressing their personal feelings.

8. Don't Be Afraid to Tell the Truth - Respect your employees through degrees of transparency. Communicate how your business is really doing on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. Give your employees information to understand shifts in corporate policy due to the economic or competitive environment.

9. Retrain or Get Rid of Bad Managers - One bad manager can pollute multiple layers of an organization. Poor managers bring down employee morale, which spills over into the engagement level of customers.

10. Recognize Employee Contributions - Recognition from a supervisor of at least two ranks above an employee makes a meaningful, engaging difference in employee morale and employee loyalty.

11. Use Technology to Manage Employee Engagement - Technology is available to help you go beyond a single employee satisfaction survey annually or an email link on the company Intranet. Enterprise Feedback Management systems can be used to centralize employee satisfaction surveys and employee feedback and track both qualitative and quantitative information. Third-party systems provide for employee anonymity, which encourages open and honest employee feedback.

Additional information on increasing employee loyalty and engagement is available in the white paper "The Top Eleven Ways to Increase Employee Loyalty," which can be downloaded free at http://www.allegiance.com/top11ways .

About Allegiance
Allegiance, Inc. is the premier provider of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), solutions that drive growth and increased profitability through improved customer loyalty, employee retention and engagement. The Allegiance Engage platform is a suite of web and phone-based solutions joined with best practices consulting that allow companies to measure and manage customer and employee engagement across the enterprise. The components of The Engage Platform are customizable to each company's needs and offer management tools and predictive analytics that link employee and customer engagement to real business outcomes. Allegiance serves customers of all sizes across a variety of industries. Allegiance is a privately owned company based in South Jordan, Utah. For more information about Allegiance, visit http://www.allegiance.com .