Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-05-02-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 2, 2021
Happy Easter and welcome to the one hundred and sixty-second episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter. According to YourDictionary.com, there are many meanings for the word “loyalty.” It says, “The definition of loyalty is the quality of being faithful to someone or something else.” But it also suggests that “A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection.”, or “Faithfulness or devotion to some person, cause or nation.”, or “Quality, state, or instance of being loyal.”, are also possible definitions for the word.
Loyalty is genuinely having another person’s best interests at heart and ensuring that the relationship is reciprocal. In our Gospel this Sunday, Jesus gave us the ultimate definition of loyalty. He said, “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” (Jn 15:4) His loyalty to us comes first. He genuinely has our best interests at heart. In asking us to “remain in me, as I remain in you,”, he is ensuring that the relationship is reciprocal and for our good.
Customer Loyalty
In business, customer loyalty is a measure of a customer’s likeliness to do repeat business with a company or brand. It is the result of customer satisfaction, positive customer experiences, and the overall value of the goods or services customer receives from a business. A customer is loyal because the business has been good to them, and their loyalty is good for the business. It is a reciprocal relationship.
The greater a customer’s loyalty, the greater the likelihood they will refer you to their friends and family. Depending on who you read or the nature of your product or service, it costs five times more to gain a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. So, customer loyalty has a significant ROI.
Employee Loyalty
Customer loyalty requires employee loyalty. In the olden days, it was common for a person to retire from the one and only company they ever worked for. These days, according to a study published in 2019 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “of the jobs that workers began when they were 18 to 24 years of age, 70 percent of those jobs ended in less than a year and 93 percent ended in fewer than 5 years.” Before you think that this is due to college kids working transient jobs, the trend continues into mid-career with “jobs started by 35 to 44-year-olds, 36 percent ending in less than a year, and 75 percent ending in fewer than 5 years.”
This kind of turnover is expensive. A company with high employee turnover is at a competitive disadvantage because it’s estimated that replacing an employee costs on average one to three times the annual salary of the employee. Disgruntled or disengaged employees who don’t leave, can curtail productivity, damage morale, and create personnel problems that consume management’s time and energy. On the other hand, a company that retains loyal employees builds an experienced, dedicated, and productive workforce that can deliver the high level of service necessary to cultivate loyal, satisfied customers.
Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons
Recognizing the bottom-line benefits, more and more companies have made investments in developing employee loyalty. But that’s the wrong reason to do it. The minute the financials are back on track, or the minute they begin to falter, employee loyalty programs will disappear as budgets get cut. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is the same as doing the wrong thing.
The organizations that benefit most from employee loyalty tend to define success in light of their employee’s success. They don’t look at employee loyalty as a program that can be cut when times get tough. For the people in these organizations, it is a way of life. They’re working for rewards that are substantially greater than profitability alone.
Overcoming the Challenge
The best thing for our businesses is for us to want every person to succeed. As logical as this sounds, we all know that this isn’t what happens. I often encounter companies where purchasing, the warehouse, and accounting spend more time blaming each other for process failures than working together to fix their broken processes. The IT and Marketing departments won’t talk to each other because they each blame the other for the website not functioning. Sales and operations argue about unrealistic delivery schedules, and the list goes on and on.
Having another person’s best interests at heart can be a big challenge in the workplace. Somehow it is easier for us to volunteer at a soup kitchen or go on mission trips to far off lands than it is to recognize the person who sits next to you at work is hungry for a word of encouragement or the co-worker down the hall is starving for the opportunity to grow, develop and put his talents to use. We are often too busy with our own projects, challenges, and issues and we view others as obstacles to our own success, instead of looking for ways we might help them.
It takes pre-emptive work to overcome this challenge and we can’t do it on our own. Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” (Jn 15:4)
Changing the Paradigm
In last week’s episode of By Your Life, I mentioned John Abbate’s book Invest Yourself: Daring to Be Catholic in Today’s Business World. He wrote how he received an early draft of Matthew Kelly’s book The Dream Manager to review and provide feedback. Matthew’s story centers upon a company dealing with serious problems of high turnover and low morale. As the owner of several McDonald’s restaurants, John Abbate said, “This was certainly something I could relate to as a franchisee in the quick-service industry.”
The Dream Manager chronicles how the company’s management team assembles a program using company resources to address the immediate needs of their employees individually and collectively, while also teaching them to develop dreams for the long term. The book’s vision hit home for John who like all of us, lives in a community that faces a multitude of social and economic issues that manifest themselves in the workplace. He said, “I could fundamentally relate to the storyline, people, and problems the company faced. [But] instead of seeing these issues in the light of negativity and dysfunction, I began to see them as a business and personal opportunity for me.”
If employees face issues with transportation, housing, or childcare, these problems will eventually cause problems in the work environment. The easy solution was to terminate the employee or allow them to quit and incur the high cost of turnover. Although he knew about these hidden costs and the bottom-line impact of maintaining the model, it took courage to change to something else. But after reading The Dream Manager, he committed to supporting the program within his organization. And while it hasn’t always been easy, it has led to incredible success stories.
John wrote, “Today, more than ever, I see McDonald’s as a unique and wonderful bridge for our employees—a bridge to a long-term career with McDonald’s or to college, a short-term help for a family, or simply another job opportunity. When thinking about the needs of the employee first, we find the by-product to be greater dedication, productivity, and loyalty to the McDonald’s brand and our customers.”
John Abbate was a hard-driving, profit-motivated, businessman. But after changing the way he thought about his role and responsibility as a Catholic leader in our culture today, he embraced the integration of his faith into his business. As a result, John writes, “Getting to know our employees at a deeper level and using our resources to help their lives have been the most rewarding parts of my job over the past decade.” He’s working for rewards that are greater than profitability alone.
Remain in Him
Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I remain in you.” (Jn 15:4) He wants an abundant life for us and knows that we are not capable of producing it on our own. “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” (Jn 15:4)
John Abbate recognizes that the paradigm shift of integration of his faith into his business would not have been possible if he had not answered the call to go on pilgrimage. That experience was the catalyst that allowed him to truly think differently. He wrote that the responsibility of being a Catholic leader “demands magnanimity… a desire to push toward greater achievement morally, spiritually, physically, and mentally. More important, it is truly desiring that same success for others as well.”
Bearing Much Fruit
“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. (Jn 15:5) Remaining in him and allowing him to remain in us is our secret to success. Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” (Jn 15:7)
Some people like to pick and choose from what Jesus said and want to interpret the words “ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you” as if God were some type of Genie offering three wishes. It doesn’t work that way. Nor should it because God wants what is best for us. That’s why Jesus said, if we remain in him and his words remain in us, then ask for whatever we want, and it will be done for us.
And what are his words? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mt 22:37-39) St. Thomas Aquinas said, “to love is to will the good of the other.” That is, truly desiring the success of others. That is truly being loyal to them.
But how do we remain in him? He told us. In the Bread of Life discourse, Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (Jn 6:56) He gives us himself and the grace we need to live each day in him. The choice is ours. Do we remain in him? Do we allow his words to remain in us? It is a wonder why we would try to do anything on our own. It is fruitless.
On the other hand, as John Abbate wrote, “When we are determined to find God in our chosen vocations, I believe it is possible to see everything in a new light—the light of Christ.” If we remain in him, if we remain in his light, we will bear much fruit. Whatever we ask will be done for us, because it is God’s will that we bear much fruit.
So, let’s pray:
Lord God, you want us to bear much fruit, to live a life of self-giving love for you and others. Help us to remain in you always. As you bear good fruit in our lives, help us to remember that without you, we can do nothing. Fill us with your love that is more than a wish or goodwill toward another, but a work, a concrete act of love that flows from our relationship of love with you, so that in everything we do, we may glorify you.
May God bless you abundantly this week as you remain in him and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.
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