Actually, make that two things…

1) The further up the hierarchy you go the more it’s really about want, not need. Survival is an absolute, fulfillment is relative. So the higher you go the more it’s fungible. Given a “like for like” choice I’ll pick the more challenging, inspirational, enjoyable role over the lesser one every time; the hierarchy of needs holds true. Hang on though, how much of that would I trade for twice the pay (or future prospect of pay) or three times or more? Theres an increasing level of compromise the further you get from absolute survival.

2) Time horizon matters. My friends and I have often debated, and lamented, how our parents had it easier when it comes to the long term. Sure, we have much more fulfilling jobs and higher pay and prospects, but they had guaranteed pensions funded by the company and enjoyed early retirement. Not a prospect many of our generation will enjoy; not unless you trade the fulfillment for a bit of security; not unless you trade now for tomorrow. Try reconciling that with fulfillment.

The people I know, or come across, who are living at the self-actualisation level of the hierarchy are either trading on their future (in the hope of a big pay-off) or have already achieved a level of self sufficiency. I think we’ll increasingly see this polarisation of the workforce in future years.

Those that can afford to take the roles that align with their values entirely because they have time to spare or because they have the money to spare. Anyone else will oscillate between the top couple of levels quite a lot over time.

- They want a sense of belonging
- They want to serve a higher purpose (i.e. a purpose beyond themselves).

Businesses are going to have to learn to serve their communities and enable their employees to be part of doing that.

This is compatible with capitalism, but think ‘capitalism like people matter’.

Good topic!

Sir

Don’t you think this is a paradox, Capitalists/ Values and beliefs – both of them seem to world apart.

There is a strong body of sociology and psychology theory that should be used more in an HR and business context. Too much compensation and reward thinking is based on common sense, which is normally wrong.

Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Model is well worth a look at, as is Mcgregor’s xy theory…

More managers and HR folks ought to spend some time with this book, The Psychology of Behaviour at Work, by Adrian Furnham.

Adrian is at UCL, and if you ever get the chance to hear him speak, take it. There are few academics of his standing that can put their research into a real world context. He can…

Problem for most companies of scale is that they’ve gone so far to ‘mechanized’ that they can only ‘make cars’. Regrouping? First you have to kill the beast…so far, I only see them trying to ‘dress the beast’ (shades of Shrek).

Whether this continues in an economic downturn remains to be seen. Let’s hope so.