Playing It Safe

All right, so we’ve established that low pay is a bad idea, and that people generally want money more than any other potential benefit from working – at least initially. In the 21st Century, health coverage has become so important (and so stratospherically expensive) that medical benefits are no longer really a perk, and must be considered part of the compensation package equal to the equivalent cost to the employee. That is, a job paying $40,000 with full health benefits will be equivalent to a job paying $45,000 without benefits if those benefits cost the employee $5,000 per year, and so on. But a job that offers no pay, just benefits, will not draw many applicants.

Let us assume for the moment that we have a workforce that is being provided with adequate wages and benefits – if at all possible, compensation levels well above the industry average and relatively high for the geographic and social conditions. We’ve gone a long way towards ensuring high job performance, but there is still room for improvement. Let’s return to the Hierarchy of Needs and consider the next level: Safety.

In an employment context, Safety needs are usually focused on so-called “job security”, or the employee’s confidence that they will be able to retain their current employment for the foreseeable future. There are a number of ways the company (and we as management personnel within the company) can help to satisfy an employee’s Safety requirements, but not all of them will be practical in every employment situation. For example, a work contract that specifies two year’s employment, with the employee’s salary held in escrow by a third party would constitute an almost perfect level of job security for as long as the contract lasted. Unfortunately, it is rarely possible to identify an employee or even a position that will be essential for any lengthy period.

Safety needs can also center on health care, secure working conditions, and an eventual chance for retirement, all of which are much easier for the company to provide (decent health benefits, on-site security, and a retirement plan are all easier to obtain than a reliable view of the future). These factors may not convince the employees that their jobs are secure, but they do help: most people will believe that the company is not going to spend the money to keep them healthy, keep them safe, and provide for their retirement if it intends to jettison them in the near future. Company-provided training, education and cross-training programs work the same way; by investing in its employees, the company shows that they are valued (and not likely to be casually discarded).

Also critical to meeting the employees’ Safety needs is the opportunity for advancement. If the company consistently promotes from within, the employees will be less concerned about being replaced by newer (lower-paid) personnel. When combined with training and education opportunities, such a policy will help to convince the employees that the company expects them to grow and advance along with it – and wants them to be able to find other suitable work when they leave.

Ideally, of course, we would prefer to have the employees come to understand their role as Stakeholders in the company, and associate their own future success with that of the company. To do that, however, we need to make them part of the process by which our company is run – to make them part of the team, part of our working environment, something we are better and more capable with than without. This, of course, goes beyond simply using people as tools to accomplish the tasks at hand; it requires the social integration of the company and brings us to the third level of the Hierarchy: Belonging…