Understanding the logic and priority behind human beings' innate needs will help you sustain a high-performance culture as a business owner or manager. Businesses require high performance and production, but the trick is creating a culture that doesn't lead to issues such as burnout, turnover, or counterproductive behaviors. This article breaks down Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how businesses can use its ideas to develop and maintain their best-ever high-performing culture.
According to American psychologist Abraham Maslow, there's a logical order to the innate needs of humans. At the highest level, we become self-actualized. As a result, we are more creative and can solve problems better. Self-actualization can lead to increased autonomy, engagement, performance, innovation, problem resolution, and better mentorship programs throughout the company.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: An Overview
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is generally portrayed as a five-level pyramid with the lowest tier involving physiological needs. Once a person's physiological needs are met (e.g., food, water, homeostasis), physiological needs can no longer be used as a motivating factor; this logic holds true for the other levels.
Of course, life is not static, and some have argued that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs should be viewed as iterative. It's an excellent typology to understand human needs better. For example, suppose a person isn't preoccupied thinking about food, safety, and isn't having other issues such as feeling too lonely. In that case, they're freer to think about or spend time on other matters, such as creative or innovative ideas in the workplace. But as we age and gain life experience, certain desires or needs may change. There is an ebb and flow to needs across the lifetime. One may desire more needs for connectedness at a younger age than an older one, for instance. Furthermore, different societies provide increased or decreased resources in different areas. Additionally, some people are better able to compartmentalize than others and, as such, may be able to focus on higher-order categories despite issues in other categories. For some, this means they can focus on multiple categories simultaneously.
Companies can use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to find a starting point to tackle performance and production issues, as a management resource to prevent issues in the workplace, or as a guide to create and maintain a better company culture. In the following sections, we dive further into each level.
Level 1: Physiological Needs
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs states that individuals first need their physiological needs met. Workers need a stable, constant internal environment, which involves getting paid well on time so that individuals can support themselves, having access to (and receiving) food and water, having a relatively stable home and work environment, providing breaks and time off, and having a good work-life balance. A fair salary ensures individuals can provide for themselves outside of work. A good work-life balance ensures individuals can take care of their needs without additional stress. This category includes air, water, food, sleep, shelter, clothing, and reproduction.
According to American psychologist Abraham Maslow, there's a logical order to the innate needs of humans. At the highest level, we become self-actualized. As a result, we are more creative and can solve problems better. Thus, self-actualization can lead to increased autonomy, engagement, performance, innovation, problem resolution, and better mentorship programs throughout the company.
Companies should invest in resources to help their people fulfill their physiological needs inside and outside the workplace. For example, in the workplace, companies can ensure the workplace has good quality air and ventilation and provides proper lighting to help and not hinder the natural circadian rhythm. In remote and hybrid work situations, companies could provide allowances or resources to help with improving employees' remote working conditions.
Regarding the basic need for food, it is well-known that Google provides its employees with a large selection of on-site food options free of charge and includes many healthy options. Similarly, Meta offers on-site unlimited free food—including coffee, such as from the popular Philz Coffee at the Menlo Park campus. Other companies are known to cater lunches regularly, such as Glassdoor. Not able to foot the entire food bill? Apple offers its employees subsidized cafés at its Cupertino headquarters. The Salesforce location in San Francisco has kitchens stocked with fresh fruit, coffee, and sodas. In a remote work situation? Consider offering discounts on meal prep and delivery services, discounts at restaurants or grocery stores, or other types of food delivery service or perk. For example, a restaurant could provide pre-shift meals. There are many options companies can choose from to help their employees with this category, and these examples only pertain to the food necessity.
While each company's resources and capital differ, mindfulness, awareness, and effort can go a long way. Remember to read the room and know what your employees need—this requires listening to employee feedback.
Level 2: Safety Needs
The second level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs states that individuals need to have a sense of psychological and physical safety. Individuals need a sense of personal security, structure, stability, predictability, and freedom from fear in the psychological aspect. In the physical aspect, people need protection from the outside world, security of the body, and health. People also need financial security. In the modern, globalized world, individuals need a steady source of income to obtain even the most basic physiological needs—but financial security is different. At this level, individuals need to be able to purchase goods and services beyond their basic needs. In the United States, people have historically been unable to save. Many workers quit during the Covid-19 pandemic over pay concerns.
Regarding psychological safety, people need to feel that their life is stable, structured, and know that their supervisors, management, and colleagues have their back in periods of increased stress or anxiety in the workplace. Providing emotional intelligence and communication training to management and supervisors can help leadership discern when individuals may need guidance or support and help communicate better when issues arise. Employee Assistance Programs can also provide employees with advice and resources, such as counseling services. Great healthcare benefits can also help with psychological and social support. Moreover, providing employees with their own emotional intelligence and communication training can help them better understand how to communicate when they need increased support, guidance, or flexibility from their management team.
Psychological safety in the workplace requires clear leadership and expectations. Individuals should never be overly and unpleasantly surprised by assignments or results in the workplace. The civility and respect aspect of psychological safety involves professionalism, knowing that one can express themselves in the workplace without fear, and knowing that others consider their feelings, wishes, or rights. Civility and respect apply to colleagues, supervisors, management, senior leadership, and clients.
Moreover, companies must also be mindful of psychological demands and workloads. A healthy work environment has a workplace culture that understands that too many assignments can lead to overwork and burnout. Increased psychological demands can harm an individual's health and well-being. Thus, companies should evaluate the following workplace demands: time pressure, mental demands, and emotional demands.
When conflict arises, it's best to resolve it immediately and directly. Management must be able to identify and resolve workplace issues quickly, which requires conflict resolution skills. Otherwise, repeated problems can lead to frustration and conflict, such as passive-aggressiveness, verbal altercations, or worse, physical altercations.
A company culture that promotes treating others as they want to be treated should be encouraged—one that respects the differences in people, such as their culture, religion, language, or even their working style. When employees feel their emotional well-being is valued, they have higher psychological protection levels, resulting in higher job satisfaction, enhanced team learning behavior, and increased performance. In addition, companies need to make sure employees feel their feedback is valued and that they can report all problems and mistakes without any negative consequences.
Along with psychological safety, employees must feel physically safe at work. Physical demands are the physical activities required of workers. Physical protection relates to the security measures that protect workers from injury (including accidents), such as biological (e.g., chronobiological factors, allergens, infectious agents), chemical (e.g., chemosensory, pollutants), and ergonomic. It also includes protection from safety threats such as disaster and theft and other physical hazards such as lighting, noise, pressure, temperature, and radiation. Ensure safety information is available to all employees. Everyone should receive appropriate safety training related to their specific job or line of business. Make plans for the worst-case situations and consider having an emergency binder available physically and digitally. In any safety or emergency situation, everyone knows what to do. It's not uncommon for companies to have emergency evacuation sites and specific emergency procedures. Finally, some companies offer safety incentives to provide additional motivation to pay extra attention to safety-related issues.
Level 3: Social Needs
The third level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs involves the social needs of individuals. People need friendship, affiliation, love, and a sense of belonging at this level. There are numerous social relationships in the workplace, but can be divided into three categories:
The relationships between individuals and their colleagues or team
The relationship between oneself and one's direct supervisor or manager
One's relationship with the organization itself
Much of the literature involving workplace social relationships focuses on the relationship between employees and supervisors (leader-member exchange) and the relationship between individuals and the organization (perceived organizational support). Some have argued that leader-member exchange and identification interact to predict performance.
Identification with an organization is a part of social identity theory. It involves the way individuals feel a sense of belonging to a particular group or institution. As companies and leaders provide more benefits, resources, value, support, and guidance to individuals, individuals are more likely to feel connected to the organization and their leaders through reciprocity. As levels of leader-member exchange and perceived organizational support increase, the identity with the company may increase, leading to higher levels of performance and production as a form of repayment through reciprocity, ultimately creating a more equitable relationship.
The reciprocal relationships between individuals and their colleagues or team (team-member exchange) are also meaningful. When individuals have higher quality team-member exchange, team-based reciprocity and a willingness for extra-role behaviors increase through the spirit of mutual assistance or altruism between peer groups.
While team-member exchange is necessary for increased team performance and production, it's important to note that cohesiveness and support are other vital factors in peer-group relationships. Cohesion involves the perception that one works well with their peer group, has minimal conflict, and feels that they contribute positively to the group's overall success. On the other hand, support involves perceiving that one has access to the right tools, information, or resources to complete one's tasks or goals. Teams with high levels of cohesion generally get along despite personal differences and address conflicts quickly. Highly cohesive teams take accountability for their work because they understand how not pulling their weight impacts other teammates. Additionally, increased levels of trust in highly cohesive teams allow for reciprocity, which impacts team-member exchange.
Pro-social behaviors should be incorporated into the workplace culture to increase reciprocity, create a stronger sense of identity, and increase cohesion and support perceptions. Pro-social behaviors promote the welfare of individuals, the group, and the organization. It's about creating a positive, low-stress, healthy environment, where all members of the company, and those who interact with the company (e.g., customers), are left in a better state (e.g., happier, closer to reaching their goals, received value) after an interaction. Companies should reward pro-social behavior and discipline destructive behaviors. Companies can also create business resource groups (BRGs) to foster connections beyond one's team and create a workplace culture of support and belonging.
In summary, a pro-social and positive workplace culture that creates a community of belonging, connectedness, and affiliation can help fulfill individuals' social needs. This means embracing diversity, promoting bringing one's 'whole self' to work, and creating connections between different departments, teams, and senior leadership. This way, individuals are provided an environment that not only fosters social relationships but one that fosters self-esteem.
Level 4: Esteem Needs
The fourth level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs involves esteem and having esteem. People seek dignity, respect, status, recognition, reputation, and prestige at this level. According to Maslow (1987), individuals need to have respect and admiration for themselves and from others. There are two components to esteem: an internal component, or what's referred to as self-esteem, and an external component that involves the desire for social status, recognition, and prestige.
Self-esteem is an aspect of the self that involves how individuals feel about themselves or how they value themselves. According to the American psychologist Carl Rogers (1959), there are three components of one's self-concept:
Self-image (the view one has of oneself)
Self-esteem (value one places on oneself)
Ideal self (what one wishes oneself were like).
Self-esteem can range from low to high and can also be inflated.
Everyone aspires to reach an ideal self, but aligning the view that one has of oneself to this ideal can be challenging. A person far removed from their idealized self may feel like an imposter and face imposter syndrome. Furthermore, the difference between these two poles may present a problem in how people think about themselves.
It is believed that self-esteem comprises two dimensions: competence and worth. Competence refers to the belief that one is capable and efficacious. Worth relates to the subjective opinion that one has value. It involves the core belief that one is good enough to receive love and friendship from others, deserving of respect and consideration, and gives individuals a sense of belonging.
Ideally, individuals should have a high level of healthy self-esteem—meaning they feel good about themselves, their competence, and feel that they're deserving of respect. Healthy self-esteem involves being open to self-reflection, making mistakes and learning. People with high self-esteem believe they're valuable, competent, and worthy even in the face of errors or issues.
Internal esteem may pose more of a challenge than external esteem. While managers can't directly change an individual's self-esteem, there are essential factors of self-esteem in the workplace than can be considered, routinely revisited, implemented, and baked into the company culture.
There are many ways companies can influence the need for external esteem. Recently, there has been an influx of recognition and reward software systems for helping with external esteem needs. For example, some software systems allow for rewards and recognition to be given simultaneously, where points are given along with recognition, and then individuals can redeem their points for gift cards or products. Another way to recognize employees for their hard work is to reward them when they demonstrate company values. For instance, a company could offer an award to people who show extraordinary organizational citizenship behavior, customer service, or innovation. Many companies have policies and procedures for rewards, and some even add recognition to their performance indicators. Other external cues for esteem include actively helping develop individuals' talents and giving promotions for hard work and skill development.
It's also essential for individuals to feel confident in the workplace to foster organization-based self-esteem. One believed determinant is job complexity (jobs that are mentally challenging and have high levels of feedback, task identity, and significance). Clarity of role, role support, and adequate training has also been shown to be antecedents of organization-based self-esteem.
Employers can support this level of needs by providing feedback, coaching, training, recognizing and rewarding employees, and providing development and promotions.
Level 5: Self-Actualization
The pyramid's apex is what Maslow called self-actualization, the highest level of psychosocial development. At this stage, an individual's basic physiological and psychological needs are met, so individuals can live more creatively, using their skills and knowledge to pursue and fulfill their unique potential. This level involves morality, creativity, innovation, problem solving, growth, understanding, and transcendence. This level is what great companies strive for—having creative and innovative employees is imperative in today's competitive, globalized, rapidly-changing world.
When people achieve self-actualization in the workplace, they feel empowered and go beyond task performance. They increase their contextual performance and become high in adaptive performance, meaning they're generating new ideas and finding innovative ways to solve workplace issues or bring new solutions to the market.
At this level, people also desire a sense of purpose. Therefore, communicating the company's purpose and vision, as well as increasing communication and autonomy, may help employees recognize their value and their larger impact on the world, which may help create a sense of inspiration or meaning.
To create a self-actualized culture that allows for more creativity, growth, innovation, and problem-solving, companies should help their employees meet their needs in the other four levels. Moreover, they should implement strategies and a cultural design that allows people to become their best selves. For example, a culture where people feel psychologically safe to take moderate risks and speak their minds will enable people to behave in a way that can lead to innovative breakthroughs.
Companies can utilize training courses to help individuals understand self-actualization and what they can do to help themselves develop to be their best, most authentic selves—and it can demonstrate to individuals that self-actualization is valued and encouraged. Special training for managers around positive organizational culture, emotional intelligence, communication, sociology, and psychology can help maintain strong and positive social relations where managers are empowered to help individuals be their best selves. Management training and development should ensure that management is self-actualized. Only those who have reached self-actualization can genuinely teach others this process. The management team must lead by example. Furthermore, companies should routinely look for ways to inspire their people. Regular communication from the company about its mission and what it's doing can be used to inspire people.
Ultimately, it's about finding ways to remove barriers for individuals inside and outside work so that people are mentally free to use their unique skillsets and perspectives.
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