the nugget

Satisfaction at Work: Feeling satisfied at work (or elsewhere) requires meeting three types of needs simultaneously. Are you helping your team members meet all three?

Research shows that people need to meet three types of needs to be satisfied:

1) Survival (this typically comes in the form of salary or other monetary compensation)

2) Personal (feeling a sense of growth or development)

3) Relationship (feeling connected to others)

In other words, compensating your employees or team members well may not be enough to keep them happy, engaged, and performing well if their personal and relationship needs aren’t being met.

the application

Since we’re entering the holiday season (it’s after Thanksgiving after all), we thought we’d pull an example from a timeless classic, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

As a brief recap, Ebenezer Scrooge is an old man who lives alone and owns his own business (his partner died 7 years ago). He’s rich, he’s grouchy, and he has no holiday spirit and also no chill. His nephew Fred on the other hand, is married, poor, but oh so jolly.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this would be impossible. You can’t be happy if you’re poor because you haven’t met your basic survival needs.

But intuitively, this framework doesn’t always make sense. Under this hierarchy, there would be no starving artists (or actors or comics or writers) because no one would seek self-actualization before meeting their basic physiological and safety needs. But we all know people like this…

So why isn’t Scrooge happy? He chose money over love, he has no friends, and he’s not growing or learning anything new. He has met his survival need but completely missed out on his relationship needs and personal needs.

the insight

You need to consider monetary, personal, and relationship needs when managing and rewarding your employees or team.

Giving people raises or bonuses to do a terrible job may work for in the short-term, but not forever (for evidence, see the Great Resignation).

How can you use this to your advantage? What non-monetary rewards might make an employee feel just as happy? A social (not work-related) dinner with you? A friendly happy hour? An extra telework day? A day off to attend a training or conference they’re interested in?

the ask

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