What makes people stay in a job?I had an interesting catch up with a friend and former colleague this week. We both started our careers at the same company, where we had worked together for over 10 years.We were discussing this whole concept of the "Great Resignation" that is impacting businesses everywhere right now and getting a ton of traction in the media. We both have seen nothing like it in our careers.It is putting a major spotlight on the importance of culture and employee-boss relationships. It is also forcing companies to really think about the policies they have, the policies their employees want, and how they can retain the best talent.We got to discussing what kept us both at our initial company for so long. Even when we started working ourselves, it was uncommon to see people stick to one company for an extended period of time. I was surprised at the direction the discussion took. My friend felt that loyalty to a boss or leader was the most critical factor for why employees stayed. He explained how he had established a close relationship to a leader (who we both knew and had in common) early in his career and that mutual respect and loyalty motivated him. He would "go through a wall" for this boss he had, even to this day, because he felt this person also had his back and best interests in mind. This person was the primary reason he stayed for as long as he did at the company. He felt businesses could not grow and succeed without this dynamic.I was shocked to hear this. Not that I disagreed about the leadership of the person we discussed, but I had always looked at it completely differently. For me, it was loyalty to the company and culture as a whole, that motivated me to stay for as long as I did. I've stated here before that I am a "team" guy. I loved the product, the people we had there, the business philosophy and the relationships we had with our customers. To this day I consider my colleagues from that period of my life as some of my closest and dearest friends. So while I liked and respected the leader we discussed, I thought everyone else shared the same feeling of loyalty and alignment to the bigger cause as I did.As I thought about the conversation and recounted it with someone else later that day, it became clear that there was a third factor to consider when looking at why people stay at a company: loyalty to their immediate department and/or team. This is sort of a subset of the two things my friend and I had discussed -- it can involve both loyalty to a boss/manager/leader AND loyalty a group of people. The biggest impact on your satisfaction with your job happens in how you feel about your day-to-day work. Do you like the work you do? Do you like the people with whom you do it? I can see situations where people grow loyal to their immediate peers, particularly when they have strong chemistry as a unit -- this could motivate them to look past dysfunction or misalignment with a leader or overall corporate culture and stick around. Maybe some of you are having these same conversations right now as you look at how to focus your efforts on keeping people motivated, implementing employee friendly policies and creating a culture people around which people want to be. What do you think makes people want to stay for a long period of time? Is it one of these things? Or is it maybe a combination of all three?Whether the leading factor is loyalty to an overall corporate culture, loyalty to a leader/boss or loyalty to a department or unit, I think we can all agree that a key ingredient, no matter what, is trust and loyalty. You cannot solve the problem if this doesn't exist in the first place.Food for thought for you. Trust me when I say there some good links below -- so check them out! Have a good one everyone!XOXODave