Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Application to IT Industry

The discussion is based on five basic categories of human needs, namely, physiological, safety, social (love and belonging), self-esteem and self-actualization needs, which are motivating humans to take action as described by Abraham Maslow’s theory of needs hierarchy (Benson and Dundis, 2003). The needs hierarchy indicates that a person would be motivated by the next level of need, when the need previous to the current need in concern, is satisfied by the person (Cao et al., 2013). Hence, the theory can be understood as when oneself has fulfilled the lower need, the person would tend to focus and pay attention to fulfill the next level need in the hierarchy as described by Benson and Dundis (2003).

The basic physical needs of a human being are the lowest level in the needs hierarchy and consuming food to satisfy the hunger can be one such example for physical need (Cao et al., 2013). The human body’s urge to be in homeostasis or in other words maintaining the consistent state of various bodily systems, are the physiological needs, which are involving food, water, warmth, adequate sleep to ensure the consistent state of the body (Jerome, 2013). Physiological needs are primary and essential as per Marslow’s theory and individual who is lacking the basic needs would focus and put effort to fulfill the primary and essential needs as the first priority (Benson and Dundis, 2003).

Once a person’s physiological needs are met the next priority would be to ensure safe living environment (Cao et al., 2013). Humans will react with anxiety when the safely in the environment is not met up to the expectation (Jerome, 2013).

The next need of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is the feel of being loved and belonging to a family and social group that one lives (Cao et al., 2013). The acceptance of oneself in the social group, and being loved by the others and feeling love towards others, which would have a significant impact on well-being of a human being (Benson and Dundis, 2003).

Once a person is satisfied with physiological, safety and social needs the feeling of good about oneself would be the next desire (Jerome, 2013). The first part of self-esteem involves an individual feeling achieved, confidence in oneself and feeling good (Jerome, 2013). Valued and recognized of an individual by others comes as the second part of self-esteem and the person would feel confident and the achievements made ay him/herself are important and valued (Jerome, 2013). However, lack of self-esteem may cause a feeling of inferiority in oneself, which cause demotivation (Jerome, 2013).

When a person can feel as living up to his/her potential and feels all life expectations are fulfilled that can be considered as the next level self-actualization (Cao et al., 2013).  The self-actualization may vary from person to person, and one may dedicate time and money to charity while another may realize self-actualization by achieving artistic or creative targets in life (Cao et al., 2013). Essentially, self-actualization is the feeling of oneself is doing what he or she believes what is meant to do in one’s life (Jerome, 2013).

Application to IT Industry

Knowledge workers are becoming backbone of many industries and information technology industry is entirely depending on the knowledge workers. Due to its intangibility the knowledge itself is tacit, and makes human resource management of such knowledge workers difficult (Carleton, 2011). Controlling of the work of an information technology industry worker is tough, as the knowledge is hidden in the brain of the employee. Hence, it is essential for the management of information technology firms to understand the applicability of Maslow’s needs of motivations, in an effective approach to the intellectual workforce.

Figure 1:Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Model

Source: Shatzkamer (2019)

Physiological needs

In general, most of the physiological needs for an individual are not considered a concern for information technology industry employees as such needs are already met with their compensations, in any IT organization (Sanyala and Biswas, 2014). Hence, retaining and motivating the employees in a tech company need innovative approach to Maslow’s needs hierarchy bottom level (Sanyala and Biswas, 2014). Tech companies implement concepts of facilitating the employees to live with their families, and even providing educational needs of children, transportation needs facilitation, leisure activities, sports activities accessibility to employees and their families withing the company owned properties. The cafeterias in the information technology organizations around the globe provide food and leisure activities employees within their office premises, making the employees feel physiological needs are automatically met even within office premises, which keeps them motivated to stay with the company and to deliver their innovative work.

Safety needs

As an industry sector which is expecting demanding work and sometimes long hours in a day, the feeling of safety in workplace is an important aspect, especially for the female workers who are becoming considerable percentage of tech workers in modern information technology companies. Creating safe culture for every employee to work is vital and many tech companies apply policies to encourage safety and gender diversity in their employees (Sanyala and Biswas, 2014). Even a simple measure as cctv coverage of all office premises practiced by tech companies, assure feel of safety to employees. Another important aspect to keep the employees motivated and retained in the tech companies is assuring the job security (Sanyala and Biswas, 2014). Even though highly demanding and highly paying careers like IT employments have a minor disadvantage as they are expected to be always updated with latest skills continuously (Verner et al., 2014). However, management of tech companies need to take innovative actions such as giving employees free training on new skills to make them ready to work on latest technologies so that they feed their jobs are secure.

Social needs

Catering the feeling of belonged, being cared and feeling inclusive in the group is essential to make the employees in an organization to work together with trust and good professional relationships among each other (Verner et al., 2014). For creating this inclusive culture most tech companies organize, team building events, gatherings and even trips funded by the company, so that employees have opportunity to interact and build close bond and respect towards each other. These activities help them to supportive and admire each other’s work, which satisfies the need of being belonged and loved.

Self-esteem

It is important to assign suitable job titles, give due recognition by the management and the other employees, to keep them motivated (Sanyala and Biswas, 2014). The tech companies have introduced various methodologies such as employee recognition programs, so that employees can nominate colleagues for their commitments or skills, and company management would give awards in quarterly an annual meeting, to such nominated employees. Even some giant companies like Microsoft use a strategy such as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional program to recognize the volunteers providing technology support to Microsoft tools and platform users, so that they have a volunteer sales and support workforce, who are not even paid by the company.

Self-actualization

It is important to provide challenging work and opportunities to make advancement in career for tech employees to excel and infuse the feeling of achievement (Cao et al., 2013). The identification of strengths and weaknesses of employees and give the acceptance to the abilities of the works and being supportive to grow into the passion of the employee makes an individual who feels he/she is doing what he is meant to do in the tech industry (Verner et al., 2014). The information technology organizations allow employees the flexibility to change their career paths, from being a tech passionate person to a creative designer role, or to a more managerial type of role or vice versa, letting the worker choose what he/she wants to become is a major plus, to achieve self-actualization. However, the flexibility of such changes to career paths should be provided with careful evaluation of the skills, abilities and the attitudes of the individuals, to ensure one can excel in the chosen path.

As a conclusion it is understandable that the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be applied to information technology industry, however, with a slight innovative approach as described with above examples.

List of References

Benson, S. G and Dundis, S. P. (2003) Understanding and motivating health care employees: integrating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, training and technology. Journal of Nursing Management, 11(1), pp.315-320.

Cao, H., Jiang, J., Oh, L. B., Li, H., Liao, X and Chen. Z. (2013) A Maslow’s hierarchy of needs analysis of social networking services continuance. Journal of Service Management, 24(2), pp.170-190.

Carleton, K. (2011) How to Motivate and Retain Knowledge Workers in Organizations: A Review of the Literature. International Journal of Management, 28(2), pp.224-230.

Jerome, N. (2013) Application of the Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory; impacts and implications on organizational culture, human resource and employee’s performance, International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 2(3), pp.39-45.

Sanyala, M. K and Biswas, S. B. (2014) Employee Motivation from Performance Appraisal Implications: Test of a theory in the Software Industry in West Bengal (India). Procedia Economics and Finance, 11(1), pp.182-196.

sodexoengage.com (2020) Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory to HR Responsibilities [online Available at: < https://www.sodexoengage.com/blog/rewards-recognition/applying-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-theory-to-hr-responsibilities>.].[Accessed on 12th May 2020].

Shatzkamer, K. (2019),Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Applied to 5G. [online Available at: <https://blog.dellemc.com/en-us/maslow-hierarchy-of-needs-applied-to-5g/>.].[Accessed on 14th May 2020].

Verner, J. M., Babar, M. A., Cerpa, N., Hall, T and Beecham, S. (2014) Factors that motivate software engineering teams: A four country empirical study. The Journal of Systems and Software, 92(1), pp.115-127.