The Hindu Business Line : Dear Maslow, nothing has changed

"Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal."

Dear Maslow,

Happy birthday! On the occasion of entering your centenary year (April 1, 1908-April 1, 2007), I deem it a privilege to write this letter to you!

As a student of human behaviour, I am acutely aware of the fact that everyone in the world of business wants to desperately understand what makes employees tick. They hope that this insight will help make those motivational forces available so that they have a competitive advantage in the labour market.

While this quest for new insight is understandable, I believe that the world would benefit if it paid closer attention to the insights that you gave us over 60 years ago, because the problems we face today are not new and unique and have been faced before for sure.

There is no better time to look back at your contribution to the field of human motivation than today, as you enter your centenary year!

Permit me to share with you the connection I see between some of the present day challenges and what you had written about in your classic - A Theory of Human Motivation, published in 1943. (Also known as the hierarchy of needs theory)

Safety is still supreme

You said, "Just as a sated man no longer feels hungry, a safe man no longer feels endangered... In between these extremes, we can perceive the expressions of safety needs only in such phenomena as, for instance, the common preference for a job with tenure and protection, the desire for a savings account and for insurance of various kinds (medical, dental, unemployment, disability, old age)."

Many of today's young employees aspire to work for `Big Brands' and this is seen as a recent phenomenon. I think this is completely in line with the "safety needs" that you spoke about so succinctly in your hierarchy of needs theory. Decades ago, a job with the Government was considered `secure'. Years later, a job with a public sector undertaking or a bank was considered secure.

Today, an organisation with a strong brand gives employees the same security they are looking for. Brands seem to signify `safety', `reliability' and `credibility'. In fact, the desire to belong to a big brand is so high that people who are unable to join a big brand from campus keep changing jobs till they get a big brand on their CV.

Similarly, the pursuit of `money' is seen as an ill among today's workforce, even as a sign of greed. Our research tells us that employees seek money as a compensation and protection against the risk that they are now subject to, given the new employment arrangements that are emerging. No different from the safety needs you spoke about!

Work environment as deficit needs (homeostasis)

Organisations in India today go to great lengths to provide a `great work environment' - convenient transport facilities, great cafeterias with international cuisine, state-of-the art recreation facilities, on-site child care facilities, regular employee surveys, periodic get-togethers to promote bonding and so on, all with the hope that it will create a great motivating environment.

Alas, the cribs continue as if it all means nothing at all. This is exactly why you described the first four layers of needs (physiological, safety, belonging and esteem) as deficit needs — if you don't have enough of them you have a deficit; you feel the need and if you get all you need, you feel nothing at all! In other words, they cease to be motivating. Companies which do not have it work hard to make it available and those who have it lament about its effect fading away!

The impact of managerial styles on the need for esteem

The need for esteem that you spoke about is, again, so clearly visible in today's organisations. The fact that employees join an organisation based on its ability to fulfil their safety and belonging needs, end up leaving because they could not work with their managers whose style did not meet their esteem needs is all so familiar.

Similarly, we also see that the same young employees who seek out big brands on campus seem to seek out smaller organisations a few years later with the hope that they will get the respect and recognition, dignity and appreciation they crave for at that stage of their career.

Regression to lower needs

In your research, you had mentioned that under stressful conditions or when survival is threatened, we can "regress" to a lower need level. How true it is even today. The huge migration of jobs to India and other countries is creating panic about job security in the US and Europe. Similarly, after 9/11, the entire world regressed to worry about safety.

In the year 2000, when the tech bubble burst in India, employees were willing to regress and take pay cuts rather than lose their jobs. Managements have used this `insight' successfully to break many strikes by trade unions in the past because employees tend to give up ideology when they are locked out for too long.

Are there many self-actualising people?

Finally, you had also mentioned that the world being as difficult as it is, only a small percentage of the world's population is truly self-actualising - with the desire to be and become all that they can and want to be. You had at one point suggested only about two per cent!

I see strong evidence of this in my work with learning and development. From among the 100 people with whom I work in a leadership development programme, I can see that the real stars — the ones who soak in all inputs and make self-directed efforts to learn and apply their learning are really very few.

While the new employment deal expects a high level of employee ownership for many things including learning and career development (a kind of self-actualised behaviour) I can see that very few are ready for it. Most others still expect to be directed by the organisation!

What I really like about your research is that it was very humanistic in orientation. You saw human beings as having an innate tendency to move towards higher levels of health, creativity and self-fulfilment.

In the age of breakthrough technological innovations and advancements, it is important to pause and ponder if all of us in organisations are doing enough to help our employees actually move towards these higher levels of health, creativity and self-fulfilment or are merely engaged in an agentic relationship with them.

(The writer is the founder and CEO of Totus Consulting, a strategic HR Consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and processes for organisations across diverse industries)