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Employees and Companies Should Be in “Alliance”

The average worker stays in a job only two years, and he or she likely knows a company isn't like a family.

"As companies have stopped showing loyalty to people, people have stopped showing loyalty to companies. It just doesn’t make sense. But that’s actually bad for both parties," Chris Yeh, an author of "The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age" told Press: Here. Yeh co-authored the book with LinkedIn chief executive Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha.

If a company is no longer a family, then what has it become to an employee? The answer, according to Yeh, is that it's become an alliance. "It’s about an explicit deal that’s mutually beneficial," he said. "We're two independent parties agreeing to work with one another."

Companies should help workers gain skills and become more marketable, and employees also help make the companies evolve and more adaptable, Yeh said.

The book also points out that this allows people to part in more congenial ways and allow for former workers to come back. "Some of the key advantages of bringing back people is that they already understand the culture of the company, " he said. "And because they have been away, they actually have new experiences and new skills to bring to bear."

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