Maslow’s Hierarchy Explained

By Lon W. Schiffbauer, BA, MBA, PhD, SPHR

Open up any textbook or website discussing motivational theories and its practically guaranteed that listed up at the top will be Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s is what we call a seminal theory, meaning the theory broke new ground when first published in 1943 and has been hugely influential ever since. Furthermore, it has stood the test of time, continuing to guide motivational researchers and practitioners for almost 80 years.

Reasons for the popularity of Maslow’s are well-established, but I think there’s another reason. Maslow’s Hierarchy is both intuitive and yet helps explain so much that may otherwise seem like a mystery.

I’ll show you what I mean, but before I do, a quick primer.

Maslow’s Pyramid

This is a graphical representation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a pyramid divided into five tiers.

At the bottom of the pyramid we have our Physiological needs. This is our need for things like food, water, shelter, and sleep.

Next we have Safety, which is our need to keep ourselves and our resources safe and secure.

After Safety is Love and Belonging, which, in the interest of brevity, I’ll refer to as just Belonging. This represents our interpersonal needs we have for love, belonging, and acceptance in the community.

Above that is Esteem, our need to be respected for our accomplishments and contributions.

And finally there’s Self-Actualization. This is our need to develop ourselves and our capabilities to their fullest potential.

The idea, in simple terms, is that each tier represents a need that must be met before someone can then move on to the next (Maslow, 1943, 1954). So with this as context, let’s see how Maslow’s Hierarchy works in practice.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Og

Meet Og. Og is a caveman, and Og has a problem: he’s cold, tired, and hungry. In other words, he’s having difficulty meeting is physiological needs, the lowest level of Maslow’s Pyramid i.e. needs for things such as food, water, shelter, and sleep. And this is all Og can think about; it consumes his every waking moment. After all, his survival depends on meeting his basic physiological needs. Next to things like food and shelter, nothing else really matters to him. A new Broadway show opening this weekend? The opportunity to test drive the latest Porsche? None of these things will matter in the slightest if Og can’t first ensure his survival. This idea bears out in the research. In their book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, authors Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan (2013) discuss the huge cognitive load—a person’s capacity to think and reason—placed upon those lacking money, food, or other basic physiological resources. Those in poverty think about little more than money; those starving think about food to the exclusion of almost anything else.

So Og works hard, finds a dry cave, kills a mastodon, gets some food, and makes clothing out of the pelt. So his physiological needs are met. But now he has a new problem: keeping his hard-earned resources safe and secure. After all, there are other cavemen out their freezing and starving to death who would stop at nothing to get what Og has. Og knows this, and so with the memories of his suffering still fresh in his mind, he looks at everyone with suspicion. Sometimes other cavemen wave to him as they walk by, but Og doesn’t wave back. He can’t. He doesn’t trust anyone. And until he feels safe, he’ll never be able to let down his guard and make himself vulnerable to others.

In the hopes of keeping his livelihood safe, Og gets guard dog and puts a door on the opening of his cave. He also sets up a neighborhood watch agreement with other cavemen in the area who are equally paranoid about losing their stuff. Eventually Og is able to feel safe and is less concerned about someone coming along and taking away his livelihood. But now Og is lonely. He worked so hard to build this life he has and wouldn’t allow himself to get close to anyone he met for fear that they would take advantage of his affections and take everything he had. But now he has plenty of everything he needs—enough to share, in fact—and is feeling physically and emotionally safe, so now he can start opening up and finding meaningful relationships with others and feel a sense of belonging in the lives of others.

As Og begins to develop intimate meaningful relationships with others, he starts to notice that he feels better about himself and who he is. Back in the old days when he was alone in his cave with nothing to distract him, the worst, most self-loathing thoughts would slip into his mind, thoughts like “I hate my life” and “I’m so stupid”. But now he has friends and intimate partners, and you know what? They really liked him! They appreciate Og for who he is and what he brings to the community. They like being with him, they laugh at his jokes, and they make him feel like he is someone special. This gives him a great sense of esteem and the feeling that he has worth and value in this world.

With a sense of worth and value comes a feeling that Og can do incredible things, meaningful things, things that would allow him to express himself in new and unique ways. So Og picks up some pigments and starts painting. At first it’s nothing special, but he doesn’t let this stop him. He keeps at it, developing his skills, capabilities, and artistic passions to their fullest potential. He can do this because all his other needs have been met. His days of hunger, fear, and loneliness are but a distant memory. Now he can grow and develop in ways that, before, would have been impossible.

We Are All Og

Not much has changed since the days of Og. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs still reigns supreme. For example, think back to a time in which you were laid off or even fired from a professional career position. (If this has never happened to you, ask your friends or family.) Speaking for myself, the hit to the system was apocalyptic. My fears, anxieties, and my sense of failure all redlined. Now you might think, sure, you’re temporarily losing your livelihood, so you’ve dropped right back down to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, but it’s more than that. For many of us, our careers define who we are. The workplace is the nexus of our social circles, our relationships. It’s at work that we apply our skills and competencies to accomplish meaningful things. Our sense of self and how we fit in the world is all tied to the workplace. Furthermore, work is an act of trust. We trust that the employer will provide for our physiological needs and in return we will dedicate the lion’s share of our work and energy to the company’s mission. We put all our eggs in this basket, so when the basket is yanked away, all our eggs fall to the ground and shatter to pieces.

Students see Maslow’s theories at work when it comes to their grades. If the instructor, by virtue of the instructor/student relationship (think Belonging) gives the student an A, the student feels good about his or her capabilities (think Esteem). Whereas if the student fails the class, Esteem is dashed and the student may feel less confidence and perhaps even less sure about his or her future (think Safety).

We Own Condos in Every Tier

It’s important to understand that none of us are in in just one tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy in every facet of our lives (Maslow, 1987). Some of us may be thriving in our careers but struggling at home or in our personal relationships. Likewise, some of us may be struggling in toxic work cultures at the office but are thriving at home or in our personal hobbies and interests. There are any number of ways in which we are trying to move up or sustain our place in Maslow’s Hierarchy.

How to Use This in the Workplace

Motivational theories are all about inspiring the very best performance from your workforce (and from ourselves!), so let’s talk about how Maslow’s Hierarchy can help us do this.

Now it doesn’t take a PhD to know that there isn’t an organization on this planet that doesn’t want its workforce firming ensconced in Self-Actualization. This is where people deliver the very best they have to offer, and yet continuously push themselves to be better and grow their competencies. When someone is self-actualized there is very little an employer needs to do to get the great performance from that person. All an employer needs to do is communicate a vision and mission, point in a general direction, and the employee will bolt out of the gate and move mountains to make that vision a reality.

Sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, here’s the thing. There are four other tiers standing between an employer and this holy land of self-actualization, and if you think navigating these tiers is just a matter of offering a fair wage and putting a ping pong table in the breakroom then you’re in for a disappointment.

When it comes to workplace culture, Maslow’s Hierarchy can be divided into three parts. The first part is comprised of Physiological and Safety. These are the price of entry—the foundational elements that must be in place for an organization to thrive.

Let’s start by looking at the first tier, Physiological. Now of course, unlike Og, your employees are likely not freezing or starving (or so I hope), but your employees’ physiological needs are no less important in their minds. They have a desired standard of living to maintain, medical needs to consider, retirement aspirations, and families to raise, educate, and look after.

Then we have Safety. This includes any threat to an employee’s livelihood. They need to feel safe from the possibility of firing or lay-offs. Safe from retaliation. Safe from sexual harassment. Safe from discrimination. Safe from bullying and workplace violence. Safe from the threat of an illness that would destroy them financially. Safe to freely express themselves and free to make mistakes without the fear of punishment. If an employee feels the need to look over his or her shoulder their ability to move up Maslow’s Hierarchy will be hindered.

Organizationally, these first two tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy are the prevue of Human Resources. Things like compensation and benefits, as well as workplace policies and practices are all designed in part to meet the Physiological and Safety need of employees. To be clear, as suggested by Herzberg’s (1966) Two-Factor Theory, these first two tiers alone do not motivate. Rather, they act as a foundation upon which motivation can be offered further up the pyramid.

The second of the three parts is made up of Belonging and Esteem. It’s here that organizational HR policies start to lose their ability to influence employee interactions. Setting up a reporting structure is one thing, influencing how people interact within that structure is quite another.

Let’s first look at Belonging. Belonging means more than simply feeling like you’re a part of a group. It means feeling like you have a place, a purpose, and value in the organization. Furthermore, the value you bring to the organization is recognized and appreciated, solidifying your place in the collective. Belonging also means feeling a keen alignment with the organization’s mission and values. All this is important because collaboration in an environment of trust improves performance (Kouzes & Posner, 2003).

Once your employees feel a sense of Belonging, they can then experience a feeling of Esteem in the organization. This is the payoff of Belonging, turbo-charging people’s ability to collaborate and perform. As employees work together, they develop a perception of one another’s ability to contribute in a meaningful way to the organization, independent of their position in the organization (Bass & Bass, 2008). This means that an employee’s ability to thrive in an organization is in part dependent on how he or she is perceived by others in the group. As this Esteem is felt in the form of recognition, appreciation, and inclusion in elite groups, the employees’ own perception of themselves and their value increases.

The final of these three parts is of course the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid: Self-Actualization. This is where every organization would love to see its employees. The tricky thing about this final tier is that everyone self-actualizes in different ways. For some it’s about attaining power and influence, for others it’s about developing expertise, for others still it’s about gathering wealth. This means that helping employees self-actualize means having a deep and intimate understanding of what drives them intrinsically.

Simple, and Yet Not So Much

As you can see, the principles of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs are simple enough to understand, but putting them into practice is something else altogether. Still, the payoff is tremendous and worth the effort!

References

Bass, B. M., & Bass, R. (2008). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications (4th ed.). Free Press.

Herzberg, F. I. (1966). Work and the nature of man. World Publishing.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2003). The leadership challenge (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harpers.

Maslow, A. H. (1987). Motivation and personality (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.

Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Times Books/Henry Holt and Co.

Lon is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Salt Lake Community College and holds an MBA, a PhD, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). In addition to his academic background, Lon spent close to 30 years working and consulting for such companies as FedEx, Intel, eBay, and PayPal, as well as a variety of small to mid-sized companies around the world.