Most of us have heard about Maslow’s Need Hierarchy. Abraham Maslow, a 20th century American psychologist had classified the needs of human beings into a hierarchy (as shown in the diagram below), stating that a higher level of needs would only arise once the preceding levels of needs were fulfilled. Managers can use this knowledge to understand employee needs. The lessons below, based on Maslow’s pyramid, should help you find some answers to the perennial question, "How do I motivate my employees?"

Lesson 1: Evaluate Your Employees

Managers need to make the effort to understand what their employees are looking for. Look at each of your employees and try and figure out what level of needs they are trying to satisfy. The easiest way to do this is to talk to your employees and listen to what they have to say about their wants and needs.

Lesson 2: Money Isn’t Everything

Most surveys taken of employees leaving organizations show that money isn’t the primary or even secondary reason that people choose to quit. Most managers tend to incorrectly think that compensation is always the primary aspiration of workers. Don’t unnecessarily throw money at your employees. As Maslow’s hierarchy shows us, employees are looking for many other things including respect, recognition or security.

Lesson 3: Make Your Employees Feel Safe

After satisfying physiological needs, Maslow says that employees will be looking for security. Job security is a vital need in most humans. In these days of recession, many workers are unsure about how secure their job is. Make sure you pass news about possible layoffs down to the lowest layers of the company, and try and tell people as soon as possible whether they are going to be fired or not.

Lesson 4: Create a Feeling of Team Spirit

After finding security, Maslow states that individuals will try and look for a sense of belonging. Your employees will tend to try and satisfy this need by befriending colleagues or superiors and trying to be part of a group in the workplace. Try and create a feeling of togetherness in your company. Make sure everyone in your company knows how important it is to be welcoming to everyone. You should also, watch out for employees who seem to be lonely or singled out of the groups at office and do your best to try and make them feel welcome at your workplace.

Lesson 5: Recognize Your Employees

Take recognition beyond the passé ‘employee of the month’ programme. Learn to acknowledge and recognise your employees when they do a good job. Remember to praise an employee for a good job privately, as well as in the public sphere. Whenever possible, give a well-performing employee a promotion. Celebrate achievements by doing small things such as taking your team out for lunch when they land a big contract. Recognition may be just what your employee is looking for, and will probably motivate your employees to achieve their potential.

Lesson 6: Help Your Employees Find Meaning in their Work

As you go higher up Maslow’s pyramid, the needs seem to be more and more abstract. While it’s simple enough to ensure your employees aren’t going hungry, it’s a much harder task to try and provide them with self-actualization. Maslow said that those who have achieved self-actualization have regular ‘peak experiences’, defined as energized moments of profound happiness and harmony. While this may sound like something that you cannot provide an employee, the truth is you can definitely influence them in the right direction by helping your employees find meaning in their work. Try and show your employees that the work they are doing is helping create a better tomorrow. No employee is more motivated than one who feels his work is worth something.

What other lessons can you derive from Maslow? Please share it in the comment section below.

With availability of more choices and options, there is a huge demand for retaining employees in any organisation. Employees are intellectual assets of any company and are exposed to confidential information and vast amount of data while at work; losing such assets is loss of time and money as it begins a new cycle from hiring to training. There are numerous strategies for employee retention and below are a few that might be helpful:

1. Hire Reputed Talent

There are online communities for various technologies and roles that have forums and blog posts. They have ranking systems and take pride in very talented people

2. Non- Monetary Benefits

Facilities like flexible working hours, work from home, provision of laptop and phone makes life simpler and creates a balance in employees’ life.

3. Company Offsite

Organise quarterly party or outing as refreshment from the daily life and change of scenery is good for health.

4. Good Salary Account

Open salary accounts with reputed banks that can provide benefits to your company’s employees like zero balance etc. And make sure you pay them ontime!

5. Company Branding

Joining a new company is a career growth choice for an employee and anyone would like to get their name associated with a brand name. So work on your employer brand to be the best.

6. Learning Opportunities

Provide training options like e-learning and important certification options while on company payroll.

7. Facilities

Make an effort by making life easier for employees by creating room for facilities like crèche, recreational room, gym, cafeteria etc. The most important thing is to have a clean working space that is not infested with rats, cockroaches, and mosquitoes. Make sure the toilets are properly cleaned and they contain toilet paper!

8.Loan Options

Provide an option to take car loan or home loan through company that will bind the employee to the company for more time.

9.Add Humor to Beat Stress

Organising fun activities within office timings is a great way to unwind, although it wouldn’t take away work related stress but it definitely lightens up the mood.

10. Salary Benefits

Provide benefits like gratuity, variable pay, and pay for performance etc. to the salary to show genuine concern of the organization towards employees.

11. E-exit and E-hiring process:

Online registration and uploading of resume and easy exit policies will make a great impression of a company.

12. Managers as part of the team:

Let the Team Leads and Managers be a part of the team to better understand the team perspective and keep the team spirit intact.

13. Identify the top talent

Identify the knowledge banks and make extra effort to retain them by involving them in decision- making processes of the company. Help them strenghen their core skills and provide them responsibilities appropriate to their skill sets and competencies.

14.Survey form

Take feedback from your employees and commit to confidentiality and let them rate their managers and company and overall satisfaction. The compilation of such reports can help the management to make the necessary changes.

15.Monetary satisfaction

Last but not the least, money is the most important factor and it is vital to match the industry standards and pay employees based on their performance.

The above mentioned points are steps in a life cycle of recruitment starting from hiring process till the exit of an employee. By keeping the basic things like salary and benefits in mind and taking an extra step of providing work life balance for the employee make a huge difference and gives the organization an edge in the competitive market.

An organization needs employees to work for them and an employee needs to get hired in a good company to make a decent career. Then why does it happen so frequently that an employee starts looking out for a job change shortly after being hired by a company? Employee retention has become a challenging task for organizations across the globe which has triggered the need to find a solution to this problem vigorously. Maintaining an employee database is important for any organization as it involves huge amount of budget in recruitment and training of employees and it is a loss of asset to lose their employees. What is it that employees need to become committed towards their company?

1.No Quick-fix Solution

There isn’t any quick fix solution to such problems and constant commitment from within the organization is needed to achieve loyalty from the employees. It is a give and take fashion; you must give first if you want it in return.

2.Identify the Root-cause

Dig deep inside the management and find out the root cause of the problem. If employees are not treated with respect and if they feel that they don’t have a say in the system, it leads to dissatisfaction which in turns forces any employee to lose commitment towards the organization.

3.Openness towards horizontal movement

When there is disagreement between team mates or with the superior, there is bound to be ego clashes. To some extent, it can prove healthy competition; however, excessive doses might lead to frustration. Opportunities for horizontal movement within the company will help settle such situations retaining the employee.

4.Work Life Balance

This is a balancing act where organization needs its employees to meet the deadlines and work with commitment towards their goal, and, simultaneously, make sure that you are leaving enough space for an employee to live their personal lives as well.

5.Motivation and Encouragement:

There isn’t any one rule to follow when it comes to keep your staff in high spirits. It is higher management’s job to recognize the effort of employees efficiently and reward them sensibly.

As impossible as it may sound, Employee Retention is achievable with consciousness towards the needs of staff. Create a transparent and enjoyable atmosphere, involve people from every level and give them a chance to learn. Do not hesitate to show your commitment towards your employees, and they will return it to you in more than equal measures. As rightly said by Thomas J. Watson, "I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can be very often traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people."

Employees are the most expensive and important asset for any company. A company spends a large amount of money on hiring, training and employee retention, however, at the same time, all corporates are facing the challenge of retaining their talent pool. Why is it that a few companies are able to take pride in their years old employees while others are struggling to keep up with their resource requirements?

The reason these few companies are able to retain their employees for a longer period of time is that they put conscious effort to make the workplace worth sticking. It’s a sure challenge to meet everyone’s expectations, but following are a few steps towards achieving the goal:

1. Make the job challenging

If employees feel that their experience and expertise is not being utilized effectively, it is demotivating and discouraging. Hence, it is important to hire a resource keeping in mind the project’s requirement and keeping the job interesting and challenging.

2. Training Sessions

Providing opportunities for training in new and emerging technologies is a win-win situation. While it’s a great add-on to an employees’ resume, it helps a company to build resources for more challenging future projects.

3. Identify Top Talent

Motivate your employees by acknowledging extra efforts made by anyone and reward it accordingly.

4. Workplace Condition

Simple things that can be overlooked, for example, providing a tidy and hygienic atmosphere and recreational activities for the employees can make a huge difference.

5. Transparency in Decision-making

Understand the importance of involvement of employees in decision- making. Any decision that affects the employees of a company directly should be made on a platform that gives a chance to the employees to speak their mind about it. This will help the management to learn other perspective of a situation and will give a sense of satisfaction to the employees.

6. Incentives

Monetary benefits are a sure way to employee satisfaction. Performance based incentives are encouraging and motivates other’s to reach that level.

7. Evaluation Process

Other than rewards and incentives, evaluating each employee and rating them based on their performance is a learning step for the employee to achieve higher.

8. Quarterly Feedback

Take regular feedback from employees that can help the HR and management team to take a step towards better bond between the company and its employees.

9. Growth Ladder

Transparency in the promotion and growth plan for each employee at the time of hiring gives security and set expectations for the employees.

10. Discussion Forums

Successful organizations respect their employees’ ideas and provide discussion platforms. The person involved in a project can give a much better point of view about the changes needed in a project and any other requirement of a project to meet the deadline efficiently.

There is a solution to every problem, but the real problem is when we focus too much on the problem rather than finding a solution. For any organization, it is important to retain its resources and to achieve this goal, there is a need for mutual respect and understanding.