Employee Loyalty of IT Executives in the Telecommunication Industry in Sri Lanka.

 

Introduction:

 

According to Diaglog Axiata Company which is a one of leading mobile service provider in Sri Lanka, they mentioned that the importance of the listening to the stakeholders. The Annual Report, 2020 mentioned that the innovative and diverse workforce is essential to deliver the best digital customer experience. We drive a culture of high performance and accountability that attracts, develops, and retains the best talent to deliver on our strategy (Dialog, 2020) and also they linked their risks to the strategies and have been identified financial, market and the regulatory risks for the strategies developed. At that point of view the management of Axiata has been identified market category under the risk factor. The IT executive employee category works under this market risk category. Axiata’s OpCos operate predominantly in emerging markets which are exposed to economic uncertainties and sensitive towards changes in developed countries and OpCos challenged by stiff price competition with little certainty of market consolidation in some markets, and industry revenue declining in others (Dialog, 2020). Also Axiata operates under the lack of operating environment where they do not have enough talent team to achieve their business targets in a wining environment.

As a country in Asian region the people in the Sri Lanka are strongly engaged with the culture and they are more implicit than the Europeans. Therefore the expectation level of the Sri Lankan people regarding the consumable goods and services are very high.  But on the other hand it is very difficult to understand their real expectation at once including internal and external customers. Hence local service providing companies are tiring at their level best to fulfill the customer expectation through employee loyalty. So the companies are trying to fulfill the satisfaction at once. The telecommunication service providing sector in Sri Lanka mainly consists with the private sector and semi government sector. The employees in the private sector are highly motivated and looking forward to achieve many goals because customer satisfaction is directly affecting to entire them. Due to that the customers who obtain the service from such employees can enjoy more loyalty regarding the goods and services while keeping the satisfaction and loyalty towards employees in the respective organization. But the visions of the most semi government employees are not high as the private sector employees. Therefore private sector is very much ahead in the satisfying the employee expectation rather than the government sector to promoting the business. Especially, skilled employees are looking for competitive advantages and they are expected convenience packages to stay at the current organization.

Lack of the right digital talent to affect organizational digital transformation strategies and need for telecommunication experience to adapt operating and business models to capture IR 4.0 opportunities (Dialog, 2020). For this barrier the company has identified the strategic implication as recruiting the skilled digital talent employees to company and through that finds the new customer experience to maintain and increase their customer pool where they can increase the annual revenue. Skilled digital talent required to drive strategic digital initiatives that seek to transform customer experience, generate new revenue streams and enable organizational efficiencies and continuously evolving the business and operational model in line with rapidly evolving technology trends and consumer expectations (Dialog, 2020).

 

Importance of employee loyalty:

 

IT executive employees are responsible for delivering new products, new experience to the customers in the service sector and ultimately determine the quality of service the customer receives. It is important to understand what influences IT executive employees’ because there is evidence that satisfied employees deliver better customer service (Rust, Stewart, Miller, & Pielack, 1996). In the service industry, customer satisfaction has the potential to impact organizational profitability (Baydoun, Rose, & Emperado, 2001) through repeat business or positive word-of-mouth advertising and increased revenue.

Employee loyalty also reduces turnover (Borzaga & Tortia, 2006). Loyalty describes an employee’s faithfulness to an organization, but may not translate into an emotional attachment to the organization (Niehoff, Moremann, Blakely, & Fuller, 2001). Loyalty is about demonstrating pride in an organization and being willing to defend the organization against criticism. Loyalty also includes not complaining about the organization (Niehoff, 2001). According to (Eskildsen & Nussler, 2000), employee loyalty measures to what degree an employee takes personal responsibility for their work, and how likely they are to look for another job. This latter component is also a measure of an employee’s organizational commitment.

Also loyalty describes an employee’s faithfulness to an organization, but may not translate into an emotional attachment to the organization (Niehoff, Moremann, Blakely, & Fuller, 2001). Having faithfulness employees is a pride to the organization.  The meaning behind faithfulness is having more loyalty to the organization. It is hard to break the bond in between the employee and the employer. Also being faithfulness employee and having faithfulness employee is a two separate part in the working environment. Being faithfulness employee obtains personal encouragement to the company.

Bibliography:

Abdullaeva, M. (2020). Impact of Customer Satisfaction on Customer Loyalty in Upscale Ethnic Restaurants. Theoretical & Applied Science, 86(06), 372–375.

Nwachukwu, C. E., Chladkova, H., & Olatunji, F. (2018). The Relationship between Employee Commitment to Strategy Implementation and Employee Satisfaction. Trends Economics and Management, 12(31), 46. https://doi.org/10.13164/trends.2018.31.45

Keino, D. C. (2016). Effects of  Work  Life Balance on Staff  Performance in  the Telecommunication Sector in  Kenya . 4(1), 129–138.