Employees Essential Needs

We all agree that we have essential needs to survive. Maslow's Hierarchy breaks these needs down to their basic core. His list is very conclusive and detailed about the needs necessary for existence. This is a great basis for research and study in human development and explains deficiencies in social interaction and the feeling of success. However, it is difficult to use this model as a manager in the workplace. As a manager, if I know a employee is having difficulties with very basic needs or esteem issues outside of work, there I little I can do to help in these areas.

The ERG model takes these same ideas and views them from a macro level. This provides the opportunity to coach and provide to these basic areas without getting beyond my expertise as a business manager. For example, I recently had an employee whose husband went on strike. In the weeks leading up to the strike her production began to decline. As her manager, I knew this was related to a fear for her families existence. As the strike continued, her production levels stayed low. Understanding the ERG model helped me to know the root cause of the my employees concern and there was not much I could do about it. More importantly, I know that once the strike was over, she would return to her previous production levels. This allowed me to be patient as a manger and be supportive through a tough time. Without this knowledge, I would have directed my attention to production levels and created more stress for the employee which in turn would provide more dysfunction among my team. The strike ended after a few weeks and my star employee returned to her previous production levels.

As I have stated earlier, I work in the banking industry in a large metropolitan area. When there is an economic downturn, bank robberies go up. Both of these models include and element of safety and security. As a manager, I feel responsible to insure my team is following every security protocol to the smallest of detail. My motivation is to provide the feeling of safety. We have a delicate balance of being prepared for such an event and not spending so much time focused on a robbery that it consumes our thoughts and brings instability because the basic need of safety is not fully satisfied.