A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

226 ■ A CLASS WITH DRUCKER
What about Salary, Job Security, and Benefits?
Of course, salary, job security, and good benefits are important. But they
are not of primary importance. You may think that it is different in your
company. Let’s analyze this and see if it is true.
If you’ve been in a company for any length of time, you’ve seen people
leave voluntarily. When asked why they are leaving, they will usually
respond that they have better offers elsewhere. They may even begin to
detail all the advantages of their new positions: higher salaries, bigger jobs,
more benefits, more opportunities for the future, etc.
If you listen carefully, however, you’ll hear a message, even if it isn’t
precisely verbalized. The underlying message is this: “These people who
just hired me really appreciate what I have to offer. They recognize my
real importance to a much greater extent than those here. They are giving
me all these benefits because I am especially important.” In other
words, although the higher salary and additional benefits were inducements
to leave an organization, they may only provide the rationale for
the real reason.
Remember, there are voluntary organizations for which pay, benefits,
and job security are nonexistent. Yet those who work in these
organizations perform to their maximum. There are those who for low
pay work on dangerous archeological digs. There are also voluntary
hospital workers and the Peace Corps, the “Big Brothers” programs, the
Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and hundreds of other organizations.
What part do salary, benefits, and job security play in motivation in
these organizations?
Motivations Are Interrelated and Connected
In the 1950’s, a social scientist by the name of Abraham Maslow developed
a theory of how all motivations fit together. Maslow called his theory the
hierarchy of needs. You may have heard of it before. Peter thought Maslow’s
work to be of importance, not only because of his including compensation
at the bottom of the pyramid, but because of his insight that these needs
were not fixed in magnitude, but that the more a need was satisfied, the
less its satisfaction mattered.
According to Maslow, we are motivated by various human needs. These
needs are at different levels. As one level of needs is satisfied, people are
no longer motivated by them. People seek to satisfy the next higher level
of needs.