by Paul Stanway

Created on: February 24, 2008

In the absence of inspiration, businesses have been known to throw endless amounts of money at something to make it work. From technology to bureaucracy, countless billions of dollars have been wasted in the attempt to iron out business problems. Similarly, businesses with rigid, antiquated ideas about motivation think that if somebody is paid more money, they will be more efficient at the job they do. In the great majority of cases, this simply isn't true.

Abraham Maslow formulated a hierarchy of needs to attempt to analyze the problem of employee motivation. In it, he drew a separation between the "low-level" and "high-level" needs of any given employee. Low level needs are a matter of basic survival and personal safety. According to Maslow, these needs take precedence over high-level needs such as the need to be recognized, finding meaning in your work and being in a comfortable social group. Unfortunately, what Maslow failed to notice is that every employee, even those whose basic survival is under threat, also seek recognition from their peer group and search for deeper meaning in their lives.

Bonus systems treat low-level employees as disposable appendages that work a set amount of hours and achieve dependent on how much they earn. Because only low-level needs are catered for in the work place, many employees in repetitive, anonymous jobs look for meaning elsewhere. Extra payment can facilitate this, but it does not integrate these high-level needs into the workplace.

In addition, low-level motivational needs tend to be ignored once they are satiated: after a couple of years in a job, people take basic matters of human survival for granted. The effect is that bonus schemes, while successful in the short-term, do not create long-term personal investment in the company. In fact, they can even reduce the motivation to work because high-level needs can be sought out much more easily elsewhere.

The structure of authoritarian businesses are often a telltale sign that managers, who almost always get paid more than workers, are not doing their job effectively enough and, as such, are working less hard than lower-level employees despite being paid more. Greater levels of transparency between business managers and operatives generate more flexible work environments in which everybody works equally hard in what they are good at. The assumption that workers are inherently lazy and require money to work hard is a falsification based on outmoded authoritarian management

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