There are rights and there are duties. At the confluence of the two in the employment contract, loyalty. Often cited, rarely defined. One clue, however: “As a matter of principle, all employees of a company are subject to the principles of loyalty and discretion throughout the duration of their employment contract”, indicated masters David Guillouet and François Hubert of the law firm Voltaire Avocats, in a conference on confidentiality and non-competition as well as on the business secrets (April 2023). Do not disclose to the outside what is happening inside, maintain good discretion, remain silent, even if you want to tell, everything is regulated. And then came a decision of the Court of Cassation, December 22, 2023. Forgotten, its 2011 case law by which evidence obtained unfairly had to be declared inadmissible by the civil judge. A reversal of jurisprudence, a tsunami in terms of evidence: anything you can produce as written, photographed, recorded, filmed without your opponent’s knowledge can be used against him, if it is necessary for your defense. He doesn’t know it, got angry, said the wrong thing: too bad for him, silence, we’re recording. “I’m a picker/I’m a grinner/I’m a lover/And I’m a sinner”, it’s Steve Miller Band’s homage to the Joker. This new shift could strain spontaneous relationships and break this fragile truce in social relationships, in one direction or the other. What remains of the value of loyalty, in terms of human relationships?
Elevator return?
Apart from the law, there are in fact a multitude of situations which the employee, manager and company triptych is confronted with at any time. The contract formalizes the relationship. Afterwards, it’s interpersonal skills. Do not steal the place of the one who allowed you to be hired is the first commandment. “You won’t kill him.” Help him, support him, continue to talk to him even if he is ostracized, the second. Return the favor when you get a promotion, even after years and when you have changed departments several times, the third. Sometimes we climb so high that there can be a conflict of loyalties between what the company is going to do and the fate of the person who got us started. The ideal would be to preserve the interests of the latter without betraying those of the former. You can either defend your mentor despite the opposition of a new shareholder, or prepare a suitable exit for him, for example by activating his network so that he bounces back, elsewhere, as a lord.
At what point can we exempt ourselves from this loyalty? She should stay. This is not learned in training but it allows you to build a legend and the reputation of those who honor it. The fourth commandment is to have the same loyalty with your team to protect it even if you can’t say anything when management changes course. Don’t lie but send messages when layoffs are looming, while a colleague has discovered the property of his dreams and is going into debt.
Leaving, is it fair?
Staying true to yourself is the fifth. We can change, it happens. Or the company drifts, governance changes and the values previously advocated no longer exist: loyalty to oneself requires a decision to be made. The whistleblower does not intend to be an informer. Stay while remaining loyal to your employer or leave while remaining loyal to who you are. Everyone is faced with this choice at least once in their private life and in their career. Pay your bills and forget why you fought or resign so as not to submit to a system that no longer suits you? You can once again ask yourself the question of taking the place of your boss since you feel you no longer owe him anything. Two options for this sixth commandment: face yourself or accept that you are a traitor. Disloyal to a human, to a team, but loyal to the company.
Seventh commandment: do not negatively burden a company and colleagues you are leaving, do not lose yourself in revenge strategies, do not insult the past. Eighth commandment: do not use what does not belong to us, the inventions, the addresses, the fruits of the work of others. Lying and theft, the common threads when we talk about loyalty. The law punishes them, morality reproves them. Ninth commandment: use your contacts to bounce back or lift a team. The question of poaching arises. But that of loyalty now belongs to the other, whom we want to recruit. Tenth commandment: do not influence him because it is then up to him alone to respond.
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