Introduction
Andrew is a friendly employee at a local IT company. He is one of the few positive employees out there who believe that humanity is one of the most important motivators. Andrew came a long way from being a typical employee to being a first-class manager. The IT department that he currently manages functions based on his principles amalgamated with the outlooks of his colleagues. Andrew believes that motivating people is not easy, but his biggest concern is the idea that there will be no success at all if people have nothing to compete for. The majority of Andrew’s colleagues call him a very decent manager who knows what his team needs at every given moment. Even though the position of a manager at an IT department is a very specific qualification, Andrew supposes that any individual may become a knowledgeable manager through practice and hard work. On a bigger scale, Andrew employs several approaches that are connected to the core ideas of Maslow’s theory. The outcomes of the implementation of these approaches became the highlight of Andrew’s management career. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the peculiarities of his approach and how he manages to motivate people within the framework of a stressful and pressuring environment of the IT department.
Security and social needs of your IT colleagues
First of all, Andrew pays close attention to the employees’ safety needs. As a manager, he is more than sure that this requirement is one of the necessities intended to protect his colleagues. Andrew also understands that a stable career and constant income are also perceived by his employees as basic needs and not a privilege. Moving a step forward, he appreciates the social needs of his colleagues from the IT department. Andrew is committed to developing a perfect working atmosphere and building a productive team instead of managing exceptional individuals. Andrew appreciates the time and effort his employees put into work and realizes the importance of such factors like family, personal life, and individual interests. By Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the most important requirement for Andrew is to support his colleagues’ esteem needs. As a self-made leader, Andrew knows how to acknowledge and highlight the employees’ achievements (both financially and emotionally). His approach is based on a list of goals that are perceived as several achievements. Therefore, even Andrew’s promotion strategy is based on the idea that an employee should be judged based on their performance and not the overall experience. Nevertheless, most attention Andrew pays to the accomplishment of self-actualization needs. He believes that Maslow’s ideas concerning self-actualization perfectly fit the occupational environment of the selected IT department. Andrew’s biggest concern is the possibility not only to increase his employees’ productivity and effectiveness but to use his potential and capabilities to make things better.
The cornerstone of Andrew’s motivation strategy is his ability to encourage the employees and help them throughout the process of dealing with the toughest assignments. Andrew believes that on a long-term scale self-actualization enables inventiveness and willingness to be creative. His main focus is the organizational culture at the IT department which will be respected and followed at all occupational levels. As practice shows, eliciting self-actualization needs positively affects the team and their interpersonal relationships. Andrew thinks that if any given member of his team cares about the development and accomplishments of the other members of the team, the department is going to provide service of the highest quality possible.
Andrew’s main idea is that all employee needs should be inextricably linked to the hierarchy of needs developed by Maslow. In his opinion, the multifaceted nature of the IT department allows us to identify the shortcomings immaculately and eliminate them rapidly. Andrew created a unique culture that differs his team from the other teams. He and his employees chose a set of acceptable cultural elements and adjusted them to the needs of the IT department and the organization as a whole. In other words, this may be perceived as the first stage of Maslow’s hierarchy but fine-tuned in compliance with the organizational peculiarities of the organization. As an efficient leader, Andrew can motivate his employees by managing human resources flawlessly and linking it to the organizational culture. Andrew’s systematic approach to employee motivation is based solely on his incentives which allow him to recognize the employees’ efforts and reward them accordingly. Because Andrew acknowledges and preserves the key cultural elements forming the team, he motivates the employees to contribute to the organizational culture and endorse it to a reasonable extent.
It is safe to say that Andrew’s approach is a reflection of his employees’ social needs and a highly-customized human resources system. Moreover, the strategy is so efficient that Andrew can increase employees’ performance simply by following the organizational culture. In this case, the effect of positive incentives is achieved using reliance on the cultural aspects set by the team. Andrew carefully navigates through the available cultural practices and eliminates the practices that are not beneficial in terms of employee motivation. The major topic for Andrew’s management is self-esteem, and he believes that there is a necessity to communicate the basics of the organizational culture to the employees to motivate them appropriately.
Andrew believes that cultural practices should be designed in compliance with the ultimate goals of the organization. At the same time, these practices should be reliable and comprehensible to certify that the intentions of the approaches are merely motivational and not mercenary. One of the key sources of motivation inherent in Andrew’s approach is a strict dependency between organizational recognition (reward) and individual contribution. By organizing a complex but consistent system of rewards, Andrew managed to mitigate the adverse effects of the backfire and evade employee demoralization. Another important point is that Andrew attempts to foresee the expectations of his employees and align the reward distribution by the factors that motivate employees the most. He also tracks all the rewards so as not to downgrade any of his team members.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is still relevant for the majority of the organizations. Despite its visible complexity and numerous shortcomings, Andrew believes that this theory is one of the best approaches to the issue of employee motivation. His practical application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be characterized as authoritative leadership. Andrew mitigated the majority of the negative outcomes using Maslow’s theory and created a nearly flawless working environment in the IT department that he manages. The application of the hierarchy of needs within the framework of team management allowed Andrew to achieve his goals and contribute to the organizational culture without replacing the core values.