Business | Bartleby

Why employee loyalty can be overrated

Many a fickle makes a muckle

Job interviews are an opportunity to see allegiances shift in real time. A candidate will usually refer to a prospective employer as “you” at the start of an interview (“What do you want to see from someone in this position?”). But occasionally the pronoun changes (“We should be thinking more about our approach to below-the-line marketing. Sorry, I mean ‘you’ should be”). That “we” is a tiny, time-travelling glimpse of someone imagining themselves as the employee of a new company, of a fresh identity being forged and of loyalties being transferred.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Is employee loyalty silly?”

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