Loyalty in general can be thought of as a line of credit for employers and employees to informally "borrow" from each other to smooth things over. Explicitly en

Loyalty in general can be thought of as a line of credit for employers and employees to informally "borrow" from each other to smooth things over. Explicitly enumerating all of a given job's duties in an employment agreement is functionally impossible, and a key part of what people mean by an employee's "loyalty" to a company is that willingness to go slightly outside of their expected duties. Meanwhile, a company's "loyalty" is willingness to tolerate downturns in returns on a given employee and protect employees' jobs even when doing so might cost them in the short term. A company's "loyalty" might take the form not punishing an employee for being unproductive for some time after a family tragedy or keeping employees on the payroll during an economic downturn even if that might cost them. If you want to completely get rid of that, even the slightest imperfection in designing the bounds of a given employee's duties is going to result in whatever processes that person relies for grinding to a halt and everyone being trapped in a constant run-around of "That's not my job". That said, given that companies have been increasingly unwilling to extend even the most basic loyalty to its employees, the right move for workers is to become more transactional. Normally, the accrued "credit" gained through loyalty might dissuade you from switching jobs even if you get a nominally better offer, but if that's no longer a factor, workers have no reason to hesitate about just looking at the bottom line on their employment agreement. This might be damaging to the broader economy since job hopping has considerable productivity costs, but on the individual level, it's the clear right choice.