How to Increase Employee Engagement with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: A Slide Show

Want to increase your employee engagement? We bet you do. After all, engaged employees perform better and stick around longer than disengaged ones. Not only that, who doesn’t want to empower their employees so that they can truly enjoy and engage with the job that they spend hours every week performing?

While there are literally tons of blogs out there about new and exciting ways to increase employee engagement, we wanted to return to basics: Good ol’ Maslow and his hierarchy of needs.

To make this as easy as possible, we created a slide show (something new we’re trying – let us know if you like it!):

As you can see, by paying attention to what needs your employees have, you can better prepare your workforce for engagement. Engagement, after all, happens at the top of this pyramid. If the lower levels are lackluster or don’t exist at all, chances are you will struggle to engage most of your staff.

While there is a lot to dig into here, we wanted to list out a simple summary of the hierarchy. In short, Maslow found that humans are motivated by specific needs. These needs include:

• Physiological Needs: Food, sleep, relaxation, etc. The things that we need as biological beings to survive.
• Safety Needs: Shelter, security, a “freedom from fear.” These are what people need to protect themselves from things like the elements.
• Love and Belonging Needs: These are the social needs, such as love, friendship, trust, and things of that nature. Think of this as a societal shelter, if you will.
• Esteem Needs: Dignity, respect, achievement, the desire for a good reputation, and more. These are the things we want after we have food, shelter, and relationships.
• Self-Actualization Needs: This is the end-all, be-all need. It’s when someone realizes their potential, when they start seeking growth and advancement. It’s what people are ‘capable’ of becoming.

These needs work both in an office and outside.

The big takeaway here is that in order for your staff members to become fully engaged, you have to make it as easy as possible for them the move up the pyramid and into the ‘self-actualization’ area. From there, it is far easier for them to engage on a holistic level with their job.

If they still need any of those other areas improved upon, it makes it harder and harder for them to engage fully.

Want these slides? Drop us an email!

Aley Brown

Aley is a versatile global business leader with proven experience managing high-performing teams and engaging a data-driven approach to strategies that exceed company objectives.