The Most Important Asset: Human Energy

Why do people work? Abraham Maslow defined his own understanding of why people behave the way they do and quite succinctly described his views in a model known as the ‘Hierarchy of Needs.’ It is an interesting pyramid that describes the needs that human beings have, and according to Maslow, everyone act in order to satisfy these needs. The pyramid has been sub-divided into five broad categories in an order such that the most basic is at the bottom of the pyramid. According to him, no person could climb up the pyramid by skipping a level. So, for instance, one would not be able to fulfill the social needs until the person has his physiological needs and the need for safety and security satisfied. The figure below is an illustration of the model:



Now back to our question: Why we work? In order to answer this question, I would like to take help from Maslow’s pyramid. As one starts working, the priority is according to the level in the hierarchy that person is. If someone is the sole bread earner in his family, for instance, he/she would try to satisfy the physiological needs which are essentially good food and pure water. Once these needs get satisfied, the person will climb up one ladder and care about the safety and security needs such as housing and shelter. On fulfilling these, the person will elevate to the third level where he would be more concerned with the satisfaction of social needs such as having friends, going out, socializing with people. Then come the self-esteem needs. Here, people are more concerned about their confidence and self-respect. Elevating to the final level, though, is a bit tricky. Although there is a possibility that self-actualization would be achieved, the truth remains that most of the people do not reach this level. Reaching this level relates to an enhanced level of confidence, creativity, determination, independence and a natural inclination to achieve disregarding all odds. Thus, it is difficult to get up there; but it is not so that no one has ever reached this level. In fact, most of the popular leaders that we read and hear about, including Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa reached the stage of self-actualization.

There was a three-pronged purpose to setting up this brief explanation of the hierarchy to set the tone of actual article. Firstly, most of the businesses in Pakistan do not have a proper human resources division and the owner, usually not trained in the field of HR, takes the major HR decisions. Also, ironically, some of the organizations that claim to be the spearheads of change don’t have appropriately qualified HR personnel and transparent, set HR policies. I included this model to make those people understand the concept in greater detail. Secondly, in many leading organizations, many competent HR personnel lay down policies and work quite efficiently in line with those policies. The purpose was to bring this as only a small reminder of the concepts they should keep their eyes on in improving their policies and structures further. Finally, the understanding of this model would help common people to relate to the concepts further presented.

So, why do we work? As just mentioned, the reasons behind why we do would depend on where we stand in our own pyramids of needs; but what do organizations do to utilize these reasons to promote a more creative, productive and satisfied workforce? To start with, these are major areas where companies can work upon to improve the overall employment experience and enhance the employees’ efficacy in terms of job performance. Interestingly, there is a lot that companies can do, and I would insist ‘have to do’ to cope up with the increasing competition and in order to win the race for the most competent people for the job.

Companies need to realize the difference between fixed assets and human assets: where the former only needs a certain level of maintenance expenditure for it to work effectively, it is never a question of a certain level of maintenance expenditure when it comes to human assets. On the same hand, while the fixed assets would only perform some pre-specified functions, the human assets can be explored and improved further by effective training and appropriate policies. When Larry Bossidy took over as the head of AlliedSignal in 1991, he very aptly described the kind of qualities that should form a part of a manufacturing leader he needed as someone: “… who would empower, not micromanage; lead, not administer; and understand technology, but not act like a technician.”

With that spirit in action, there should be a promotion of feeling of openness throughout the organization; within and amongst hierarchies to bring up issues and possible solutions from every level. Clarity, transparency and consistent application of organizational policies form the requisite for the notion of organizational justice.

If your organization has to outperform others in the race, your organizational human resources should have the right mix of people. There are many companies that have ethnocentric collection of group of people working throughout the company. Moreover, there are other organizations that disregard the apparent flags of non-discrimination they hold and recruit and retain from amongst members of a particular sect, community or even gender. This practice spoils even the earnest efforts these companies are making to justify their policies since employees tend to lose confidence in the leadership mindset with fairness perspective. Also, this promotes a less competent workforce for the company.

Also important is the challenge in the work environment and opportunity to learn each day. This, of course, should not be interpreted as translating into draining all human energy just to put on feeling of a learning environment; on the contrary, it means making the work more exciting and meaningful to everyone. This also inculcates outlining the growth prospects and path of growth for workers.

The culture of effective rewards needs to be developed. Most companies take their reward systems as something taken for granted and something which could not be changed. However, to succeed in the competitive arena, quality talent needs to be rewarded with fixed as well as variable pay structures. There should be a dual-emphasis on internal consistency; pay structures within the company and external equity; market-based pay scales and a balance between individual factors of employees and administrative procedures of the company.

The feedback mechanism within the company could be considered an integral system which could be amazingly effective catharsis for employees across the hierarchy. Access to the leadership and decision makers is important, however, there has to be trust developed in employees about the management’s reputation which needs to be upheld as one that lives up to its commitments; not just doing lip-service. This is of critical importance since many managers feel they can improve the morale by lighting false hopes amongst employees. Despite being somewhat dicey but highly attractive proposition to some managers, this never works in the long-run and only remains responsible to further tarnish the organizational repute.

In conclusion, there could be various reasons and motivations behind employees working for a company; the management could do many things to make their companies more preferred workplace, in effect, getting as well as retaining talent. I would put the words Azim Premji of WIPRO to justify the efforts required to improve: ‘Talented men leave; dead wood doesn’t.’ The choice is not difficult, is it?