Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory is the most widely used theory for studying organizational incentives. Maslow's theory divides needs into five categories: physiological needs, security needs, social needs, respect needs, and self-fulfillment needs, from lower level to higher level. Physiological needs: physiological needs for food, water, air and housing are all at the lowest level. People always try their best to meet these needs before turning to higher levels. A person is not interested in anything else when he is hungry. His main motivation is to get food. Even today, many people cannot meet these basic physiological needs. Managers should understand that if employees are still busy with their physiological needs, the problems they really care about are irrelevant to what they do. When we try to motivate our subordinates by meeting these needs, we are based on the assumption that people work for compensation, mainly about income, comfort, and so on, therefore, we try to motivate employees by increasing wages, improving working conditions, giving them more spare time and interworking hours, and improving welfare. Security needs: security needs include personal safety, life stability, and the need to avoid suffering, threats or disease. Like physical needs, this is the only concern of people before security needs are met. For many employees, security needs are characterized by security and stability as well as medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and retirement benefits. People who are motivated by security requirements mainly regard their careers as protection against the loss of basic requirements. If the management personnel think that security needs are the most important for the employees, they will focus on using such needs in management, emphasizing rules and regulations, career security, welfare benefits, and protecting the employees from unemployment. If employees have a strong security demand, managers should not be unconventional when dealing with problems, and should avoid or oppose taking risks, while employees will follow the rules and regulations to complete their work. Social Needs: social needs include friendship, love, and affiliation. When physiological and security needs are met, social networking needs are highlighted, which leads to incentives. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this level is a different level from the previous two levels. If these needs are not met, they will affect the spirit of employees, resulting in high absenteeism, low productivity, dissatisfaction with work and low mood. Managers must be aware that when social demand becomes the main incentive source, work is seen as an opportunity to find and establish a warm and harmonious interpersonal relationship, occupations that offer opportunities for social interaction among colleagues are valued. When managers feel that their subordinates are striving to meet such needs, they usually adopt a supportive and approving attitude, with a strong emphasis on being acceptable to those who work together, carry out organized sports competitions, group gatherings, and other business activities, and comply with the collective behavior norms. Respect needs: Respect needs include both the personal feelings of achievement or self-worth, and the recognition and respect of others. People with respect and demand want others to accept them based on their actual image and think they are competent and competent to do their jobs. They care about achievements, fame, status, and opportunities for promotion. This is because others recognize their talents. When they get this, they not only win the respect of people, but also are confident in their hearts because they satisfy their own values. If they cannot meet these needs, they will be frustrated. If the honors given by others are not based on their true talents, but in vain, they will also pose a threat to their psychology. When motivating employees, special attention should be paid to managers with respect to their needs, and public incentives and praise should be adopted. Special emphasis should be placed on the difficult nature of the work and the superb skills required for success. Awarding honors and medals, posting praise articles in the company's publications, and publishing honors for outstanding employees can all improve people's pride in their work. Self-fulfillment requirements: the goal of self-fulfillment is self-fulfillment or potential. People who reach the realm of self-realization accept themselves and accept others. The ability to solve problems is enhanced, self-consciousness is improved, and independent operations are required to be independent without interruption. To meet such a demand that tries to make full use of his talents, he should have partially met other needs at some point in time. Of course, self-fulfilling people may be overly concerned with the fulfillment of such highest-level requirements, so that they consciously or unconsciously give up meeting the needs of lower levels. Those who are at the control of self-fulfillment needs will be motivated to use the most creative and constructive skills in their work. Managers who pay attention to such requirements will realize that no matter what kind of work can be innovated, creativity is not exclusive to managers, but what everyone expects. In order to make the work meaningful, managers who emphasize self-realization will consider using the strategy to adapt to complicated situations during the design work, and assign special tasks to those with extraordinary skills to display their talents, or leave room for the group of employees when designing work procedures and developing execution plans