It’s no secret that many employees would rather have better benefits than to just take extra money or a higher paying job. Benefits unlock more than just fulfilling material needs, they touch on something rooted much deeper in our psyche. They flip switches that unlock the power of accumulated psychological advantages. This is not just about benefits or giving your team something they want, it’s about giving them the keys they actually need to supercharge their creativity, productivity and engagement. Before we dive into what these advantages are, in case you don’t know who he is, I want to introduce you to a famous psychologist named Abraham Maslow. In 1943, Maslow published ground breaking research into what he called, the “hierarchy of needs” in his book, A Theory of Human Motivation. Essentially, Maslow proposes that our core needs as humans are arranged in a hierarchical structure starting with physiological and going on to safety, connection, esteem, and finally, at the top, self-actualization. When each one of these needs are met to a certain degree, it allows us to enter a state of higher level functioning, which is where we tend to not only do our best thinking, but we tend to be more creative and productive. Self-actualization is what happens when we are motivated to realize our full potential and apply our skills to the world fully. If you combine the power of material benefits and workplace culture to strategically solve these core needs, you will boost company morale, productivity, engagement, satisfaction and just about every other positive stat there is. When we as leaders seek to bring out the best in each person through contributing to the individual need, and combine that with the natural desire for each person to see their work positively impact the world around them, we see the power of human collaboration in its best possible state.
Physiological
The first is pretty simple. We require food, water, sleep, sex, and shelter. This one requires very little explanation, although if you can’t pay someone enough for them to eat, sleep and procreate in peace, then you need to seriously take a hard look at how much you pay. As staff grow and become more competent, having low pay will guarantee they will always be looking for a way out. If you can’t pay your staff higher wages, at least implementing some form of bonus structures or pay increases based on productivity will help them meet this need.
I remember when I started managing a service company where the previous owner paid their staff the lowest possible wage for their industry. As staff grew more competent, they would leave for higher paying jobs. That company was literally paying to develop staff for other companies because as soon as they were trained, they were gone. As I stepped into my job, I found that we had clients, but the jobs would either be done with such low quality or so slowly that the company couldn’t turn a profit. The business was failing. When I started managing operations, the first thing we did was raise wages and implement crew based bonuses. That next year, we retained more competent staff, turned jobs quicker, increased job quality and client satisfaction and almost doubled our revenue. All from giving the team the ability to make more money.
This doesn’t just stop at pay, though: Helping employees solve problems like meals throughout their work day also shows to boost morale and productivity. Keeping your people well stocked with snacks and even some personal care products allows your staff to have all the fuel and personal tools they need through the day to keep their energy levels high. A work schedule that allows your staff to get enough sleep and not overworking your teams also contribute to meeting this core need.
Examples: Good pay, bonus structures, company lunch programs, housing allowance, access to personal care products, childcare, travel assistance, etc.
Safety
Maslow said this need was rooted in “security, order, and stability”. This looks like personal security, emotional security and some amount of job security. Health benefits, insurances and retirement security are the easy answer but going out of your way to provide access to things like gym memberships, safety training and wellness programs will go a long way to help people feel stability.
Because of the nature of triggers, trauma and behaviors, you can’t always provide psychological or emotional safety, but you can provide some benefits, like counselling or therapy, to help your staff when they are having difficult times.
Emotional security tends to be a bit trickier since it’s so subjective. While you can’t prevent every issue, you can show that when you do run into an abuse of emotional or personal boundaries, your company has a strong response to protecting the emotional and physical health of your staff. Not doing anything creates unsafe environments.
Examples: Health insurances, life insurance, wellness benefits, gym memberships, safety programs, counseling, retirement accounts, safety or CPR training, general insurances, PTO, long/short term disability coverage, 401k, health trackers, etc
Love and Belonging
This is our need for communal and social belonging. While you can’t necessarily make your staff be best friends, you can provide a socially healthy work environment. This means that toxic leaders or staff who destroy trust need to be addressed, corrected, and either coached into healthy interactions with others or dismissed. If you have a company with little trust or a leader who doesn’t build relational equity, your staff are going to be more worried about emotional threats and not productive connections. The way they navigate and share their work will be predicated on office politics and social fears, not the merits of their work. Toxicity needs to be addressed to allow staff to move into being socially healthy, which then manifests as them showing connection and affection towards each other. That’s where the full potential of this need gets expressed. Giving your team the room to have fun together and use company time to connect on things other than work allows them to build the relational equity that supercharges the efficiency of their communication when it’s crunch time. This especially shows itself when there is conflict. Staff who feel connected are slower to assign enemies and blame each other. This gives more room for the actual problem to be solved.
Helping your staff solve their need for love and belonging means also providing room for them to be active in their families and giving ample freedom around important family events. Allowing staff members to prioritize some of their schedule around their families shows that you care about the relationships and people who are important to them. Showing you care for their family builds loyalty, trust and a deeper sense of appreciation.
Examples: A socially healthy workplace, let me emphasize that trust is a benefit, extra time for family, parental leave, staff time to do something fun with each other, team bonding, shared leave, adoption/fertility insurance, bringing pets to work, messages,
Esteem
Aaaah, the good old fashioned need for recognition. This one is very often talked about in leadership circles but sometimes not fully understood. Yes, recognizing good work is absolutely key, but I think we can challenge ourselves to take this one a bit deeper. We have a deep desire to see our ideas and creations fully manifested. This looks like actually giving staff clear ownership over their area of the company, complete with room to make mistakes. Clearly define what they own and set goals that push them to learn and achieve more than what they think they are capable of. By giving ownership and authority, you’re giving them room for self expression in their work. Some of us have a hard time doing this because it means potentially risking more failure. Sometimes, their self expression may be in conflict with the company goals. To navigate this, define non-negotiable failures; these are the things that they cannot miss or else there are consequences. Outside of that, allow them to fail and then become their coach after they run into issues.
From here, you need to give them all the tools they need to master something. Humans have an incredible drive to learn more and become more competent in their field. Higher competency is what pushes us into our next phase of self-actualization. Giving your staff room to grow and master their skills (or new ones) doesn’t just benefit the job at hand but it unlocks a psychological barrier of expression and confidence. This is the confidence needed to bring their best ideas to the table and be able to communicate why those ideas are valuable. While many see training as a tool to grow hard and soft skills, it’s a tool to inject people with confidence from knowing that they are capable, intelligent and articulate.
Examples: defining what they own, training/learning, work recognition, clear goals, coaching, speaking/presentation training, Tuition reimbursement, etc
Self Actualization
Getting your staff to this spot should be one of your biggest goals as a leader. This is when you tap into creativity and thinking that is not tethered to a worry or fear of an unmet need. Not only that, a team that has reached this point, has the ability to collaborate and achieve the seemingly impossible. To boil actualization down to its essence, that means your staff are able to fully apply themselves and see the benefit of their work positively impact those around them. This is where the magic of all these benefits connect back to our primitive desire to help our tribe survive. As a leader, your main job at this point is to get out of the way and resource your team to go above and beyond their goals. Give them a high level of autonomy and trust. By allowing them to do good work, it means helping them connect their competency with articulation and action. Give them space to express their ideas creativity and resource the action required to make those ideas and creativity become something real.
If you can’t build upward mobility, build outward mobility by allowing them to apply their talents to other teams or people, or by helping other departments overcome their issues. This means connecting your staff back to how their work benefits others. This can be an altruistic mission, a highly beneficial product or allowing their work to benefit the team at large. Maybe one of their bonuses for completing an important task can be a reward for the entire team or company at large.
Examples: Autonomy, leadership of ideas or people, Mission/Vision, Telecommuting options, etc
People are always trying to get these core needs met and if they can’t do it in your work environment, then they will always be looking for the next opportunity to help them meet these needs. Rooted in all of us is a desire to see our work positively impact the world around us. It’s so ingrained in us that millions of people around the world volunteer billions of hours to working for free to they can see life get better for those around them. Why not tap into that potential?