If Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs were redesigned today to explain what motivates people at work, beyond the survival basics, what would it look like? Facebook set out to answer that question by examining responses to the workforce survey it conducts twice a year. The company identified three main motivators: career, community, and cause. In the past, organizations built entire cultures around just one of these motivators. But in Facebook’s most recent survey, more than a quarter of employees rated all three as important — and 90% had a tie in importance between at least two. The findings were strikingly similar across age groups and job functions. Contrary to stereotypes, Millennials have the same core values as the rest of us, and engineers care a lot about connecting with people. The similarities held across geographic locations, as well. It turns out we’re all hoping to find a what, a who, and a why.
Strike up a conversation about work values, and it won’t be long before someone brings up a pyramid — a famous psychologist’s best-known theory. Abraham Maslow’s big idea was that we all have a hierarchy of needs: once our basic physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, we seek love and belongingness, then self-esteem and prestige, and finally self-actualization. But that pyramid was built more than half a century ago, and psychologists have recently concluded that it’s in need of renovation.
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