Maslow, Happiness, Employee Engagement & Value

[Bay Jordan]

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.” Joseph Campbell

Whatever philosophical debates that statement might open up, it certainly could be argued that in a modern work context people have lost any sense of the “rapture associated with being alive.” At a time when working conditions are arguably better than at any time in recorded history, employee disengagement is an increasing problem.

This may be partly because this is likely the first time that employee engagement has ever been deemed important enough to even warrant measuring. Yet disengagement is said to cost billions. Even then, however, it is the trend that is the major concern. It is clearly a problem we need to solve. So how do we begin?

Let us for a moment forget the questions that have plagued philosophers and thinkers for centuries, and the complexity of human nature, and just accept Maslow’s theory that the higher up the hierarchy of needs one moves the greater the chance for happiness and the “rapture” that may be equated with it.

If that is true, then logic dictates the inverse must also be true: the more one moves down the hierarchy of needs the less propensity there is for happiness at work. So the same logic would suggest it makes more sense for employers to look to meet the higher needs of their people, rather than their more basic needs. Ergo!

Any organisation looking to engage its people should prioritise its response in the reverse order to Maslow’s hierarchy. This is why the concept of valuing people is so important: it creates the mindset to do just that, in a way that nothing else does! And it is particularly relevant in these difficult times.

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(Note: This is a slightly modified version of the blog posted there this morning. Also, please accept my apologies if it appears twice, but it completely disappeared after I went to preview it to ensure the image had worked and I had to recreate it.)

[Bay Jordan]

Derek

Of course. I didn't intend to apply that the basic needs did not have to be met: simply that the time and effort spent on the basic needs should be proportionately less than on the other factors. At the moment it is almost invariably the other way round. .

[Derek Irvine]

Interesting way of looking at this, Bay. We at Globoforce are in the business of creating cultures of appreciation through strategic employee recognition. The thinking of Maslow and Hertzberg is foundational to our approach. For example, psychic income—our human need for social acceptance, increased self-esteem and self realization—can never be met through traditional cash compensation. Organizational behaviorist Fred Hertzberg dedicated many years to studying employees’ various needs for physical and social security and comfort, finding that salary, supervision and working conditions would only prevent people from being dissatisfied. Hertzberg identified only one tool—recognition—that could bring employees to the point of satisfaction because only recognition feeds our psychic income needs.

In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, however, until food, shelter and heat at the bottom are met, the need for self esteem, peer recognition and acceptance, and eventually self-actualization at the top cannot be realized. Companies cannot minimize the need to correctly and fairly compensate their employees and provide benefits for health and wellness. But if you apply that Maslow hierarchy to Total Rewards and we can see how cash compensation (at the bottom of the hierarchy) is perfectly suited to catering to our basic needs in life. That’s a must. There is no point in starting to tackle the higher needs until the basic needs are satisfied first. Then we see how employee recognition and appreciation (together with tools such as career planning, appraisals, intrinsic rewards) is so well suited to catering to the higher needs at the top of the hierarchy.