Incentivising the Faithful: A biblical and economic look at high worker turnover

By Dr. Emmanuel Acquah-Sam (An Economist)

My background as a managerial economist and author, together with my personal experiences, has made me curious about the reward for the faithful. I have this piece written, having heard and experienced the discomfort associated with persistent loss of faithful workers in most organisations.

I sincerely acknowledge that some workers change jobs for personal, professional, or family-related reasons consistent with rational career progression. However, when organisations consistently lose long-serving, faithful, and high-integrity employees alongside opportunistic movers, turnover ceases to be a matter of individual choice and becomes evidence of systemic failure. It then becomes critical for the relevant reorganisation of reward systems.

It seeks to assist employers and review committees investigating high staff turnover to closely examine how faithfulness recognition and motivation should be structured within organisations.

Faithfulness is showing integrity when no one is watching or remaining committed to one’s assigned task when even a reward seems not immediate. The word of God reminds us that “It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful.” (1 Cor. 4:2).

A. Kinds of Workplace Incentivisation

There is no one-size-fits-all incentive for faithful workers; rather, faithfulness is sustained through a balanced mix of material rewards such as fair and timely pay, security through stable contracts and clear progression paths, recognition that affirms dignity and trust, opportunities for growth and skill development, moral leadership grounded in fairness and truth, and healthy workplace relationships marked by respect and inclusion. When these incentives are absent or unevenly applied, even the most faithful workers are eventually discouraged or disengaged, not because they lack commitment but because faithfulness is unrewarded.

B. Benefits of Faithfullness:

Faithfulness qualifies a person for promotion, material, and financial rewards (Matt. 25:21).

Faithfulness attracts divine covering and preservation for the faithful and their descendants (Psalm 31:23; Proverbs 28:20). Quite, often, children reap where parents toiled.

Faithfulness gives peace to the heart. Heaven measures success not by speed or popularity but by faithfulness. (Psalm 119:165: Mark 10:29–30; Revelation 2:10; 2 Thes. 3:3)

C. How the Faithful are Treated

Oftentimes, employers assume that the faithful don’t have anywhere else to go, so they are not adequately rewarded (Habakuk. 2:3). However, delay must not be denial, but refinement.

Faithful workers look strange among friends and colleagues. Joseph was imprisoned, Daniel was thrown into a den of lions, and Jesus was crucified. Some are told by colleagues to carry the jobs back home when they retire from their organisations.

Structural failure of reward systems cut across workplaces,
marriages, churches,
families, and governments.
Faithfulness sustains systems, but systems often do not support the faithful adequately.

Faithful people do not advertise themselves aggressively, but
believe effort will speak for itself. They assume goodness will authomatically be noticed by superiors.

Leaders
prefer loyal dependents to competent thinkers, innovators, and
block those who might outshine them (1 Samuel 18:9).

A lack of transparent performance metrics, protection for hardworkers, innovators, and succession planning, make
faithfulness becomes an exploitable charity and does not attract reward.

Organisations are still morally and professionally obligated to reward faithfulness to induce others to do the same.

Failure to Reward Faithfulness:

Unrewarded faithfulness destroys worker morale and leads to quiet quitting.

When institutions praise people after they are dead, they save money, avoid promotion,
escape accountability.
Posthumous recognition often becomes hypocrisy. No worker, unfortunately, will eat a certificate of honour or a plaque. Also, no widow, widower, or children live on praise.

Although genuine and inspiring words drive workers to work harder, the faithful will not wish to always hear “you are doing very well” without the accompanying expected rewards for the efforts they put into their work.

A system that feeds on faithfulness but refuses to reward it is sowing the seeds of its own collapse.

Faithfulness must be defined in measurable terms. Organisations must link loyalty and innovation to incentives and protect whistle-blowers and visionaries.

Organisations must separate loyalty from silence. Faithfulness is never equated to quieteness.
Faithfulness includes constructive truth-telling.
The word of God says that “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” (Proverbs 27:6)

Organisations must reward process, not just outcomes, because
many faithful people build foundations others later harvest.
Systems must reward effort, integrity,
long-term thinking,
not only visible profits.

Employers must teach employees strategic faithfulness and adequately reward them.

Faithfulness must be based on wisdom, not naïvity; documented, not assumed; bounded, not self-destructive.
Even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
didn’t commit himself to any man because he knew what was in man (John 2:24–25).

Employers must not live to regret faithfulness if
they failed to protect it with adequate structures.

Usually and ironically, some people suffer ill consequences after exposing a system, but others benefit after the exposure – cruelty.

Faithfulness sustains institutions, yet institutions often abandon the faithful. When crookedness is rewarded and integrity ignored, motivation dies quietly, and excellence is not rewarded adequately.

Conclusion:

This write-up is not motivated by envy, resentment, or bitterness of heart, nor is it an attack on individuals or institutions. Rather, it is a conscientious academic and professional reflection on organisational dynamics that affect motivation, faithfulness, and staff welfare and organisational learning and reforms.

Organisations must recognise integrity in time, reward loyalty with intention, and build systems where the loyal worker no longer retires unfulfilled. Success is often inherited from the foundations others have laid.

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