Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Businesses that thrive within the realm of top efficiency often have personnel in management positions that understand certain fundamental techniques which allow them to identify, analyze, and manipulate employee’s individual motivators which ultimately works to catapult the company into even higher levels of productivity. Maslow presents a model of needs that interprets human behavior. It is a useful instrument to decode employee’s character. Maslow’s model has more than one usage. Businesses have been known to use Maslow’s model also to discover, influence, and increase its consumer base. In this paper, I will discuss the various categories of Maslow’s needs model and give examples of how they can be influential manipulators to business success.

Maslow categorized our needs into five classes; physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization. Physiological needs are basic low-level needs such as air, water, food, sleep, sex, etc. and are requirements for the basic things that allow us to live. According to Maslow, these needs are the most prepotent of all needs and supersede all others further up the hierarchy. They must be satisfied before higher-level needs such as self-fulfillment are pursued. When these are not satisfied we may feel sickness, irritation, pain, discomfort, etc. These feelings motivate us to alleviate them as soon as possible. Once they are alleviated, we may think about other things. We may need many things in life, but if we lack food we will most likely choose to eat before doing anything else. If the physiological needs are relatively well gratified, there then emerges a new set of needs, which we may categorize roughly as the safety needs, (security; stability; dependency; protection; freedom from fear, anxiety, and chaos; need for structure, order, law, and limits; strength in the protector; and so on. Such needs might be fulfilled by, living in a safe area, medical insurance, job security, and financial reserves. According to Maslow's hierarchy, if a person feels that he or she is in harm's way, higher needs will not receive much attention. Once a person has met the lower level physiological and safety needs, higher level needs become important, the first of which are social needs.

Social or belonging needs are those related to interaction with other people. They create a sense of community via team-based projects and social events. At this level people have a desire to belong to groups: clubs, work groups, religious groups, family, etc. There is a need to feel loved (non-sexual) by others, and to be accepted by others. Once a person experience a sense of belonging, the need to feel significant surfaces.

Esteem needs can be both external and internal. While