Employee Wellbeing: Combining Maslow and Putnam
It is well established that employee wellbeing is a function of two factors: the individual and the organization. Each influences the other enough so that in order to effectively and successfully address employee wellbeing, the employer must focus their efforts on both, not just one, or the other.
As humans, we operate through the use of mental models and frameworks. We need both since mental models are a way we can conceptualize an issue or subject and a framework is one way to think of the mental model in terms of implementation or operationalizing the model.
Since wellbeing is a function of both the individual and the organization, in order to effectively and successfully address employee wellbeing, mental models and frameworks for both are needed.
At the individual level, a well known mental model is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs model. To understand and address employee behavior in the work environment (HBWE), the wise employer will consult Maslow’s model.
Maslow’s model is simple to explain and easy for the to understand. I have not, until now however, found an easy to explain and understand the various mental models for the organization focused factor. Laura Putnam has offered a model which solves this dilemma.
Like myself, Laura is a thought leader and a leading catalyst for wellbeing in the workplace. Laura has offered us a five component mental model related to the organization’s role in employee wellbeing. Here are her five components:
- Functioning Factor — Employees having the tools and resources they need at their disposal to do the work they are asked to do.
- Feelings Factor — How employees feel about their work, the organization, their work relationships, the workplace environment, their overall employee experience, etc.
- Friendship Factor — This factor could also be called the workplace relationships factor.
- Forward Factor — Personal and professional growth opportunities
- Fulfillment Factor — The mental/emotional factors of inspiration, meaning, purpose and alignment with the employee’s deepest Why’s.
There is nothing new or magical about any one of Laura’s five factors. Each has a strong, well established research base supporting it. The brilliance of Laura’s model lies in its simplicity, ease of explanation and ease of comprehension.
Like Maslow’s model, Laura’s model is a model employers can easily wrap their head around and understand in terms how it might apply to their organization. And this is critical for implementation, as a confused employer never implements or they implement what a vendor is selling rather than what the organization truly needs. In other words, a check off the box approach to employee wellbeing.
Both the Maslow and Putnam mental models provide a way for employers to organize their thinking around the issue of employee wellbeing. But both mental models are only a starting point. The frameworks, strategies and practices related to implementation still need to be created and utilized.
While frameworks can be universal in nature, strategies and practices to enhance employee wellbeing will, of course, need to be unique to each organization and to each employee within the organization. After all, one size fits but one.
And as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, implementation is the rest of the story.
