Efforts to improve company culture might be failing if employee motivations aren’t met

Is everyone motivated by the same needs?

In the 1940s, psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized human behavior was rooted in a hierarchy of needs, starting with self-actualization (personal growth and fulfillment), then self-esteem (achievement and respect from others), next social needs (family, love, and belonging), safety (job security and healthcare), and, lastly, physical needs (food, water, and shelter).

But fast-forwarding to today, HR pros shouldn’t expect every employee to prioritize the same order of needs, said Kelly Mackin, co-founder and CEO of the workplace well-being assessment platform Motives Met and author of Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work. In her book, Mackin highlights the research behind motivation and what drives employees.

Mackin spoke with HR Brew about how people pros can approach employee motivation in a variety of ways.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What would an HR pro learn from your book?

We conducted a lot of research to really get to the heart of what thriving at work is all about, because there is so much noise out there to navigate through…and research can’t really seem to make up its mind either about what employees want most. Research will claim that employees walk out the door because of a lack of growth, but other data says, “No, it’s a bad boss or a lack of appreciation,” so there’s a lot of contradictory advice that’s well-intentioned, but it’s overwhelming.

There are actually 28 psychological, emotional, and social human needs, what we call motives, that drive our ability to be well and perform well at work. And, we’ve developed a framework that I’ve added into the book that makes it really easy to grasp what these 28 different motives are.

But, what the data also showed is that what you need most to thrive is going to be really different than what I need most. So, there is no universal hierarchy of needs. It’s discovering what each person’s hierarchy is. So, we kind of have to cut through the noise out there, and the BS and go, “What is true for me? What is true for my team and my work culture?”

What’s an example of a company that’s done this well?

One company that’s really adopted it very well we did a big workshop with…One, they worked on giving managers a communication tool where they could ask really good questions related to each of these 28 needs. […] Asking employees, “Hey, is that company picnic we do every year, really fun, or is it not so fun? What would be something really fun that our team could do to connect this year? Or, what’s one change we could make in the way we work on our team that would give us greater work-life harmony?”

Second is they got everybody involved in the goal to create a culture where these motives are met. So, culture really belongs to everyone, it isn’t just on leaders. And, when you bring your teams and your employees into this idea that there are 28 different needs that are sometimes going to hold friction with each other, everybody has different ones that are important, some they don’t care about.

Third, they also did a manifesto statement around embracing motive diversity. Certain motives can be treated with favoritism, they can be put on a pedestal, and then other motives can be overlooked or judged, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it oftentimes. But, if you want to create inclusive workplaces, it’s really important to have everybody embrace and respect motive diversity. That even if I don’t think something is very important…I can still respect that motive and really make sure I’m not the one that’s harming it on that team.

How can HR pros create a motivation-based culture?

I created a five-step roadmap. It’s the Motives Pathway, that I call it, that really is a roadmap that’s meant to be walked yourself, as an HR leader, with your employees, with your teams, with your other managers. Because again, if everybody walks this five-step pathway, that’s really going to get us to where we want to be, to have that people-first culture, where people’s needs actually come first.

The five steps are to understand, be mindful of, evaluate, communicate, and then, ultimately, be able to meet these motives [and] developing an action plan. So, when you take those five steps, that’s really going to help create that deeper organizational change that’s going to have that lasting impact.