Move Over, Maslow?

Many of you are familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If not, you can Google that phrase or Dr. Abraham Maslow and get back a number of entries that talk about this idea. Here he is, looking all professorial.

In a nutshell, people have certain needs that have to be met before they can achieve happiness and they are ordered from your basic needs on the bottom to those less survival-critical at the top. Starting from the bottom, you (we all) have these needs:

• Physiological: hunger, thirst, sex, sleep
• Safety: from threats, danger, the elements
• Social: a sense of belonging, acceptance, association, love/intimacy
• Esteem: of self, from others
• Self-Actualization: personal growth/development, realizing potential

If I could draw a pyramid, Physiological would be the base and Self-Actualization would be the top. Your basic needs start with satisfying things like hunger and thirst and then build upward from there.

Without satisfying these needs, ideally in this order, we can't be satisfied or content or happy. Disruptions in achieving these needs cause unsettling ripples to flow outward through our lives and keeps us from becoming the person we strive to be.

With all due respect to Maslow, some new theories are emerging about human motivation that are based on modern brain science and other more contemporary methods of exploring human behavior. These have some interesting concepts which directly impact how we as internal communicators should approach our jobs.

In particular, there's an article in the July/August issue of Harvard Business Review that is based on the 2002 book, Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices. The article, Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model, discusses four basic emotional needs or drivers, that shape what we do. These drivers are:

• Acquire: obtain scarce goods, including intangibles such as social status
• Bond: form connections with individuals and groups
• Comprehend: satisfy our curiosity and master the world around us
• Defend: protect against external threats and promote justice

These four are not building blocks on top of each other but are all equally a part of the foundation that motivates everything we do.

The article then goes on to say that for each of these drivers, an organization, i.e. your company, has a lever to use to take advantage of that driver. For example, the drive to acquire can be satisfied by your firm's reward system. Rewards in this context mean everything from total compensation, bonuses, and pay for performance, to differentiation from good performance and average performance, and how well your pay scale stacks up against your competitors. In other words, to impact someone's drive to acquire, you can pull the rewards lever.

Think about your own organization for a minute and how it can use these natural drivers to shape employee behavior. What levers can you think of that will push the bond driver? Social media comes to mind, as does team work and allowing employees to create groups. What about the comprehend driver? The defend driver? I'd be interested in your comments about what levers and actions might work at your company.

The article went on to show how improvements in each of these driver areas translated to the bottom line of the company through employee satisfaction, engagement, commitment and reluctance to quit.

Each of these has a role in determining how your employees act and react in our workplaces. Figure out the right levers to pull to engage these drivers and you'll be on your way to satisfying your employees' most basic of needs.

Wearing a sweater like Maslow is optional.