The Hierarchy of Needs for Employee Engagement

The Hierarchy of Needs for Employee Engagement Has your company cracked the employee engagement piece yet? Very few companies that Im aware of seem to  be happy with their levels of engagement and are  constantly looking for new ways to tackle the issue. Our friends and staff survey specialists at  Scancapture have looked at  employee engagement from a psychology point of view in the graphic above. Do you remember Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs theory  was fully expressed in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality.  According to Wikipedia, the hierarchy remains a very popular framework in sociology research, management training  and secondary and higher psychology instruction. So why not apply it to employee engagement. Maslows idea was that  people have to  satisfy basic human needs like eating, being safe and comfortable in your environment before you can start thinking about personal growth and intellectual development. Interesting: Maslows Hierarchy of needs applied to employee engagement. How many of not engaged and disengaged survive in a startup? pic.twitter.com/bJL9M81wld Anna Friedrich (@annasophie) October 13, 2016 So how can we apply this in a workplace context?  Lets start from the bottom: 1. Survival The updated model replaces the physiological step  with survival, this means trading your time and effort in exchange for money so that you can  keep your lifestyle ticking over and have food on the table. This step is of course integral to any type of career progression and personal development; without funds you will struggle to move up the pyramid. There are of course a minority of  people who are happy with taking risks, some would call them entrepreneurs, such as  jumping ship to pursue your dream without having the money for it. 2. Security Security is up next and it corresponds to the original safety need for Maslow. When we talk about security in the workplace, its job security most people fear being laid off and having to look for something else. There are no longer jobs for life, not even in public service, but that doesnt mean people have given up on wanting a stable career path.  Two very important aspects of security would be whether a job is a fixed position and of course what the salary is  the answer to both of these should be satisfactory to the job seeker. 3. Belonging Most big companies can hire people on a permanent basis and pay them well, at least when they require experienced people. Once somebody does get job security and a decent salary, what do they want next? Maslow would say love and belonging, in the workplace well settle for belonging; holding trust and acceptance within a group. People have a need to be part of something bigger than themselves, typically something along with purpose as opposed to making more money. 4. Important Almost at the top we find esteem as a requirement for Maslow, in our pyramid this  has been converted into importance. An employee has to feel that theyre making an important contribution to the organisation. As long as everyone within the company knows how their job fits in with the bigger picture and how they  help pushing the business forward, they ought to  feel their work is important. 5. Self-actualisation Finally weve reached the apex of our hierarchy of needs, and just like with Maslow were in the market for self-actualisation.  Most people have high ambitions but only about 15% reach this level of being highly engaged. The individual who has achieved self-actualisation will inspire others to do their best and always ask what they can do for others. RELATED: 10 Shocking  Stats About Employee Engagement.