8
Maslow
Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970) along with
Frederick Herzberg (1923 - ) introduced
the Neo-Human relations school in the
1950’s, which focussed on the
psychological needs of employees. Maslow
put forward a theory that there are five
levels of human needs, which employees
need to have fulfilled at work. All of the
needs are structured into a hierarchy and
only once a lower level of need has been
fully met, would a worker be motivated by
the opportunity of having the next need up
in the hierarchy satisfied. For example a
person who is dying of hunger will be
motivated to achieve a basic wage in
order to buy food before worrying about
having a secure job contract or the respect
of others.A business should therefore offer
different incentives to workers in order to help them fulfil each need in turn and progress up the hierarchy. Managers should also recognise that workers are not all motivated in the same way and do not all move up the hierarchy at the same pace. They may therefore have to offer a slightly different set of incentives from worker to worker.