The days when we started a job after high school or college and worked our way up their latter until we retire at age 65 are over. Not only do we have more jobs in our lifetime than any other generation before us, but we also plan to not stay in our positions. Whatever the reason, money, power, status, or just plain boredom, we will change jobs many times throughout our lives.

Numbers from 2010 show than only about 44% of employees feel a strong sense of loyalty toward their employers. Over one third of employees just flat-out want a different job. I don’t know how employers feel about this, but it can’t be good for the long term success of any organization.

I reviewed a number of ways that employers could retain their star employees and create a more lasting and loyal teams that have longevity into tomorrow. Much of the advice was general in nature, but speaking to small business in particularly, most emphasized the critical nature of retention.

Some key elements that seemed to carry throughout the articles I looked at were paying performers as much as you can afford, providing challenging work that yields a sense of accomplishment, valuing employee ideas and input, giving praise and letting staff members know they are a valued part of the team, and taking a proactive management role where you help employees set goals and achieve them.

It is good policy to build lasting relationships with the people that work for you because nothing can truly replace a team that can be trusted to get things done even in your absence. Hopefully we can look foreword to seeing some changes in the sense of employee loyalty, but much of that also depends on an employers sense of loyalty.

I think the key take-away is that it’s a reciprocal relationship. Take a look at this infographic about exploring the new job relationship dynamic from Jobvite.Com. I think the stats are interesting: