Edition 57 - Sattler's Hierarchy of Job Needs

We're back with another edition of Pondering Careers, and this week we're going to be taking a look at Maslow's theory of motivation in relation to career choices, which I have (somewhat tongue-in-cheekily) reframed as Sattler's Hierarchy of Job Needs.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the types of things that actually matter in making decisions about our careers. It's all well and good to focus on things like passion or interests, but these are not the only factors to consider (or even the most important) and I've found that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs gives us a pretty good template for ranking the importance of relative factors in the decision making process.

Claire Pech shared her annual Letter to the Graduating Class this week, and it's always a great read, but I think this year she's really hit the nail on the head with some quality anti-advice, which pretty much summarised my thoughts.

Interests and passions can be a factor, sometimes, and for some people, but they shouldn't be the foundation of your decision, or, as Claire puts it:

Some love Netball, Sleeping, Swimming, Yoga, Art, Pottery, Scrolling. Should they follow that interest and pursue a career in that area? Become a Netball instructor? Set up a Pottery studio? Pursue an Art degree? Great if that is the calling. But for many those interests are just that. Interests. Following that interest may not be the best idea for a dream job.

In this article I'll explain how we can use Maslow's original pyramid with a few tweaks in career decision making, plus I'll give you an example what it might look like in practice.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Back in 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper outlining five levels of needs that humans have to meet - and key in his theory was that the lower order needs must be met before the higher order needs can be addressed.

Most people are supposed to be unlikely to reach the top level permanently (unless, perhaps, you're someone like the Dalai Lama or Richard Branson), and the order isn't carved in stone, so for some people social/love/belonging may be more important than physical safety, for example.

It's a pretty simple theory, and it comes with a great visual, plus it feels like it makes common sense, so it's been quite popular over the years and no doubt you're already aware of it to some extent. It's not without its criticisms, however, most of which centre around a lack of empirical evidence and it's Western-centric approach.

There's a not bad summary here from BiteSize Learning if you want to dive deeper into Maslow's ideas.

Prior to this particular deep dive, I remembered Maslow's Hierarchy in pretty basic terms - first we need food, water, and sleep, then we need to be safe, and then all the other 'fluffy' stuff comes after that.

Often I would apply this basic theory when trying to advocate for the rights of people without stable housing; if they don't know where they're going to sleep, or where their next meal is coming from, how can we expect them to have the capacity to find employment? They're too busy just staying alive!

Side note: this is why Universal Basic Income programs are so incredible important - in one large scale pilot from the US, participants were two times less likely to be unemployed.

Maslow's Hierarchy has been applied to a huge variety of contexts, and you'll see it come up from time to time in buzz-word HR articles aimed at motivating employees and building team spirit, like this one from Forbes.

Finding references to Maslow's Hierarchy in the Career Development literature is somewhat more of a challenge.

This study from New Zealand found that factors from the lower tiers of Maslow's Pyramid (physiological and safety) were more influential than the higher tiers in career decisions.

Which is what we would expect to see, and I also feel like, while the links may not be explicit, Maslow's theory ties in with some of the research I've been reading that suggests that interests are the first factor discarded when it comes to the crunch.

Which brings me to my own version of the Hierarchy...

A Hierarchy of Job Needs

Before I get stuck in, let me be clear that I'm not seriously pretending that I've come up with something unique and revolutionary here, and I don't want to offend anyone, so if you're a Maslow fan please don't think I'm trying to steal his thunder.

My version of the hierarchy relates to how we make choices about our work, in terms of what's more important, because when weighing up our job options, we do so in a way which compares one job with another.

It's not a question of:

Do I want this particular job?

It's actually more like:

Do I want Job A or Job B (or Job C...)?

You could actually say it's like choosing a car, or a rental, or insurance - you already know you're going to take one of them, you just don't know which one yet. On the surface, this might look like the decision between one job that pays more but requires you to work in the office five days a week, vs. another job that pays a little bit less but offers you a choice of hybrid work locations.

But when we're comparing jobs, some factors are more important than others.

In my hierarchy, I think that the pyramid looks more like this:

Let me go through each level at a time.

First up - we will, if able, take any job over no job.

Sometimes, a suitable job isn't available, and this could be for a range of reasons - for example, we might have a disability and there are no supports in place which would enable us to work, or we live in an area with high unemployment, or we've grown up in a community with high levels of intergenerational unemployment and we lack the skills and social capital to find suitable work.

But these kinds of cases aren't what we're talking about - I'm saying that, if you are able to work, and jobs are available, then the majority of us will actually choose any job over no job.

If you want evidence of this, go back to those UBI studies from earlier in the article and look at what happens when we empower unemployed people with skills and support to find decent work.

We'd prefer a secure job if possible

Unless we have some other way of covering our living expenses (or have a truck-load of spare cash in the bank), most of us would choose a secure job over an insecure one.

This makes sense, as we want to know that we're going to be able to turn up to work tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and that our work is going to provide reliable income. This doesn't always mean we prefer working for someone else over working for ourselves, because in many cases being in control of your own income could be more secure than relying on your boss to stay in business, but it does mean that we'll make choices that lead to secure income.

This is something that comes up a lot in career conversations, particularly with young people, because they want to know that they can expect to stand on their own two feet one day. They'll often choose what they perceive to be a more secure pathway over one that is more risky.

Everyone has their own unique risk tolerance, so a job that feels secure to one person may seem incredibly risky to another, but you can expect that most of us would choose a job that we believe is secure over an insecure pathway.

Relationships are important

I've lost count of the number of adults I've seen who tell me they hate their job, but who actually just can't stand the people they work with.

In many of these cases, they don't need a new pathway, they just need a more compatible workplace.

Which is where the social factors come in - if we have a choice between two secure jobs, and one of them feels more like the type of people you want to work with, then you'll probably choose that workplace over the other.

This factor appears in decisions at both the workplace and the career pathway levels. It's more about perception than reality, so we'll seek out pathways which we think are popular with people who are already in our social groups. And this is why it's so important to showcase women in STEM, for example, so young girls can see people like themselves working in STEM roles.

We also consider this factor when thinking about how much we want to deal with other people. For some, constant contact with other people is a must-have, but others would prefer to be left alone to concentrate on their work, and in either case, we'd prefer to find a career that aligns with our expectations for social contact.

The social factors aren't as important as security, however. Most of us will choose a boring, less fun job over one with the right amount of social contact if the social job isn't secure, because, at the end of the day, getting paid is more important.

Higher status is an optional extra

If all our other needs have been met - we have a secure, stable job with people we like, then we'd prefer a job that makes us feel good about ourselves.

This is what drives people to choose doctor or engineer over lawyer or accountant - we trust medical professionals, engineers, police officers, and teachers far more than people who sell cars or work in politics.

Most of the time when we're at the point that status can factor into the equation, we're working with people who are incredibly lucky and who can pretty much guarantee that they will be able to secure a safe, well-paying job in any field. These are the kids who've done pretty well at school, know they can afford to go to university (if they want to), and who have enough social capital to be able to find work after they graduate.

Interests are the last thing we consider

Provided all our other needs have been met, and our remaining choices are all secure, well-respected, and match our social needs, then we think about our interest areas and passions.

If we're working with a young person who is incredibly lucky, as I described in the last paragraph, then the career conversation might revolve around whether they would prefer to choose civil engineering or architecture, and we might ask them which aspect of buildings and construction they are most interested in.

Because all the other considerations in the hierarchy are equal, they can focus on their interests.

If I was working with someone further through their career who was thinking about retraining into either disability care or aged care, we might have a conversation about the type of people they enjoyed working with most, and which group they are more interested in.

Or, if I was working with a young person trying to decide between tiling and carpentry, I might ask her which trade appeals more.

On the other hand, if I'm working with someone deciding between two pathways where there is an imbalance at another level of the hierarchy, we'll probably be having a different conversation.

Here's an example:

I recently worked with young man in his early 30's who was looking to move out of a fashion sales manager role - his work had moved mostly online, and he missed the in-person conversations he used to have in-store with customers. He wasn't sure if he should move into aged care or look for another in-store sales manager role.

He felt that aged care would allow him to give back (ie. be higher status) but he was concerned that he would have to go back to the bottom and he could lose salary (security). We talked through the options, and I suggested he look for sales roles in healthcare, and when we reconnected a few weeks later he'd already secured a role leading a branch of a mobility aid store in town.

In his case, we were able to meet as many of his tiers as possible, but if he hadn't been able to find something he may well have ended up choosing the fashion sales role because it met a need on a lower tier of the pyramid.

Try applying the hierarchy to your own career decisions

I've been working through all this in my head lately, and as part of that process I've tried to reflect on the decisions I've made and how they relate to the Hierarchy of Job Needs.

My risk tolerance is pretty abysmal (it's a wonder I was ever brave enough to start my own business), and security was a HUGE factor in my early career decisions. I was really interested in history and textiles, but I couldn't see a clear career pathway in either of those fields that would pay the bills, so they got put to one side.

My parents were a teacher and nurse, so things like law and finance were out because they didn't meet my status needs (which is totally nuts), and my Dad always talked about how much fun he'd had when he was in the Army, so I satisfied my needs for security, social contact, and status and went in the Air Force.

I've taken any job over no job, especially when trying to find work that fitted around being sole parent to three littlies, and I've given up jobs I've loved in my interest area because they couldn't provide the security I needed to pay the mortgage.

Right now, I'm incredibly lucky to be working in a thriving business with people I love, in a field I'm proud of, and in an area I'm passionate about, so perhaps I've won the career lottery?

How could you use the Hierarchy in your practice?

Sometimes being explicit about what's happening in the decision making process can be really helpful, and I feel this is where the pyramid comes in. I can imagine using it with students to work out what level of decision we're really talking about, or to identify when all the options on the table have crossed a certain tier threshold.

I'm tempted to make it into a poster, so if you'd like this please let me know and I'll get one sorted for you.

That's the end of my musings for this week, but if you've used Maslow's Hierarchy in your work before and found it useful please let me know - I'm always curious to see how others have applied these kinds of concepts.

Until next week...