Maslow’s Hierarchy: a HR Guide
A practical guide to meeting employee needs and enhancing motivation.
Motivation is the most central lever leaders have for performance. With an understanding of motivation, you don’t have to push your team members along to their potential — they’ll do so themselves.
A way to think about motivation is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We’ve all heard the theory at some point — first created by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943, the theory serves as a model for understanding the motivations of human behavior. How can leaders and HR professionals to align their business’s performance with employees’ motives?
In this article, we’ll talk more about this popular psychology theory and apply it in the workplace!
💡 What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?
Maslow argued that human motivation could be thought of as a hierarchy. People are motivated to fulfill their most basic needs first before moving on to more complex ones. The theory is often shown as a pyramid:
Imagine you’ve come home from a long flight, and you haven’t slept in over 24 hours. In that moment, it’s likely you wouldn’t be thinking about the different ways you can grow in the workplace — your primary motivation would be to get some sleep.
In other words, you need you physiological needs to be met before they can think about needs like self-actualization.
Managing peoples’ motivation, similarly, is a task that requires constant attention. Too many companies treat their employees’ well-being as items on a “check-off” list, as if once their most basic needs are satisfied, they’ve done their job.
On that note, let’s examine each level of Maslow’s hierarchy, from the perspective of team leaders and HR professionals.
🛏️ Level 1: Physiological needs
These are the most basic needs that any company should provide. Some examples include:
- Breaks for meals and snacks. Schedule these throughout long work days.
- Well-heated/cooled offices. Offset whatever harsh weather conditions may be outside.
- Easy access to water and a restroom. Make sure employees don’t have to travel far for necessities.
Of course, these are the most important needs to fulfill — your employees wouldn’t be able to do anything without them. But don’t make the mistake of stopping here. Too many employers assume, once they’ve provided the basic necessities, their employees are set to perform.
“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”
— Simon Sinek
On this level of the hierarchy, your employees work because it’s their contractual obligation. But, there’s so much more you can be doing to motivate them into wanting to work.
🛡️ Level 2: Safety needs
Once a person’s physiological needs are met, their minds shift to safety needs. In the workplace, this means providing clarity and predictability for your employees. Here are some ways this can look:
- An emotionally safe work environment. Focus on constructive feedback over criticism, and give employees space to learn from their mistakes and grow.
- Communication training courses. Dedicating time for this in the onboarding process helps employees speak up when they notice problems in the future.
- Ensuring employees are paid on time. This allows them to manage their finances effectively and provide for their loved ones.
- Employee benefits. Consider benefits like health insurance and paid family leave.
- Faithfully complying with contractual agreements. Layoff anxiety was a huge issue recently during the pandemic.
In this post-pandemic world, those last three points are crucial. Job safety became a widely unmet need during the pandemic. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 million Americans lost their jobs between February and April of 2020 — spiking the unemployment rate from 3.6% to 14.8%.
If your constantly worried about losing your job due to layoffs or budget cuts, it’s hard to move up the hierarchy. Once employees have assurance that they know what the near-future will look like, they can experience higher forms of motivation.
🧑🤝🧑 Level 3: Social Needs
The next level of the hierarchy focuses on social needs. Some could argue this level is more important for humans than any other—in Harvard’s 85-year-long study on human happiness, researchers found that the quality of our relationships was the number one factor to good health and happiness. Not money or success, but the extent to which someone’s social needs were met.
In the workplace, fulfilling social needs can significantly enhance team cohesion, collaboration, and overall employee satisfaction. Here are some ways leaders can address social needs:
- Regular team-building activities and social events. Focusing only on output and performance can make it hard for employees to get to know one another as people.
- Opportunities for collaboration. Consider bringing people from different teams together to forge new synergies.
- Buddy programs. Entering a new company with an existing culture can be intimidating, but doing it with a dedicated friend by your side can help greatly.
- Employee Resource Groups. More workers today are seeking companies that emphasize DEI. ERGs can particularly help underrepresented parts of the workforce feel more engaged and seen.
You can create a heads-down, isolated work culture if you want — you’ll still receive output from your employees. But if they were collaborating and connecting along the way, performance would be so much higher.
🏆 Level 4: Esteem Needs
If Level 3 was our need for outward connection, Level 4 can be thought of as the inward equivalent. Employees want to feel valued for their contributions and have their achievements acknowledged. Some strategies include:
- Specific feedback. Go beyond just saying “good job” — mention the specifics of what they did well and the the effects of their contribution.
- Active acknowledgment of success. Making a habit of celebrating success, no matter how big or small, can provide a huge source of motivation.
- Regular performance reviews. Make sure to lead these with a growth mindset that celebrates their progress since the last review.
- Regular 1:1 check-ins with employees. As companies get bigger, it’s easy to feel like a cog in the machine — blocking out just 15 minutes a week to touch base with an employee can help them feel valued.
According to a study by Gartner, well-designed recognition programs can increase average employee performance by 11.1%. It won’t dig into your budget to give feedback or check in with employees regularly, but these small efforts can go a huge way in motivating employees and unlocking their potential.
🏔 Level 5: Self-Actualization Needs
It’s worth noting: not every employee may want to ascend to this level. A work environment where people are well-provided, connected, and respected is already enough for an inspired team of employees. But, what if your employees want more than what you’re giving them?
If you’re meeting their needs in the four lower levels, they’ll start yearning for something more—something to drive their career forward. Here are some practices you can implement:
- Promotions: Promote employees with experience to leadership roles. Give them a chance to teach their expertise to newer members.
- Challenging projects: Assign projects to employees with elements they haven’t tried before. Encourage them to think in new ways and utilize their creativity.
- Career Pathing: Work with employees to create personalized career paths that align with their aspirations and the company’s goals.
- Professional Development: Invest in courses employees can take for upskilling and reskilling.
These last two points are set to become more popular in the years to come. Skills, more than ever, are the most valuable resource an individual can have.
For a long time, your college degree was thought to determine the highest level you could reach in your career, often called the “paper ceiling.” According to Gartner’s 9 Future of Work Trends for 2024, skills are set to shatter this paper ceiling. Providing your employees with opportunities to learn even well into their careers can help your employees reach self-actualization.
Final thoughts
It’s worth noting, Maslow’s theory isn’t a perfect one. Human needs may not be as rigid as the hierarchy suggests in the real world, and sometimes needs may fall outside or in between the five levels.
But, it’s still a great way for HR teams to think about employee motivation systematically. They can use the theory as a framework for creating a positive work environment, and adjust the framework to each individual.
CLASSUM has a host of features to drive this strategy. Through anonymous posts, for example, you can address your employees’ safety needs by allowing them to ask questions freely without the fear of making mistakes. Or AI DOT Link, which meets social needs by connecting questions with other learns and related posts to create an open, collaborative learning environment.
Lastly, check out CLASSUM’s Learning Path feature for self-actualization needs. You can now connect skills with specific job roles and learning content for a company-wide skill taxonomy. Employees can receive tailored learning paths from AI DOT, containing course recommendations based on their job roles and career goals.
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