Most of us are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
Maslow's Hierarcy of Needs
The model is based on an assumption of: Survival first, mental & emotional satisfaction last. That is certainly necessary for an individual to sustain his or her own life and, perhaps to achieve a feeling of self-worth and purpose. I am contemplating a bit of a disparity between what is basic survival for the individual, however, and what is necessary for groups to survive.
The worst workplaces are those where you are told, “You’re lucky to have a job!” These employers believe motivation is achieved by threatening to push a person one rank down on the pyramid. Of course, that seldom lasts for long and those employers are abandoned as soon as any other offers a more stable situation, or a less aggravating one. At the average workplace, Facilities departments emphasize safety, and HR departments organize cookouts and raffle contests or other activities in order to bring about a sense of community aimed at achieving the 3rd level of the pyramid.
What we are seeing from companies such a Apple, Southwest Airlines, Google, Zappos and Best Buy, however, is that offering basic sustenance with a little bit of social interaction for the sake of a paycheck is simply not the path to performance – for either the individual or the organization. In these companies, whose internal cultures are frequently written about and are serving as the models for the workplace of the future, the foundation of how they operate lies not at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, but at the top.
Clearly, the concept of what work can be is changing, and it is turning from a mindset that says the company only needs to pay its employees just enough for them to, on their own time, achieve their self actualization needs to one where self actualization is the base of the pyramid. By allowing employees to control their own time, to explore their passions and exercise their creativity – and not necessarily in pursuit of business profit but to serve societal needs – these businesses are finding that they not only survive, but thrive.
How much is wasted in most businesses on turnover, recruitment, feeble “engagement” initiatives or training on “empowerment?” What if those only the people-first side of things was the fundamental starting point for everything we do, and not just the thing we do when everything else is taken care of?More and more, it seems that a focus on the employee – as a person whose existence is not something to be “balanced” but is made up of complex, intertwined elements that form the whole – is yielding better bottom-line business results.
