The hierarchy of employee Inolvement

International Business Machines Corporation known world-wide as IBM is a multinational technology company and headquartered in New York. Originating in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) which was later renamed as “International Business Machines” in 1924  (Wikipedia).

IBM manufactured and markets computers hardware, middleware, and software, and offers to host and consulting series to mainframe computers to nanotechnology. (Wikipedia)

IBM has over 400,00 employees and their employees are referred to as IBMers.  IBM won first place in the “Advocacy” category of Regan’s 2016 Employee Communication Awards

Employment involvement creates employee motivation, empowerment, teamwork and the ability to be acknowledged for performance appraisal. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be applied to the theory that “humans have their basic needs met in order to pursue their own growth and development” (loyaltyworks).

 

Maslow’s theory applied to humans needs are as follows:

• Survival- the idea of food, water, sleep
• Safety- Having a home to protect you from the elements, to feel protected from the “outside world”
• Belonging- The need for friendship, intimate relationships
• Importance – Virtues, faiths, beliefs
• Self-Actualization- to fulfill full potential (most people never actually reach this point and spend their entire lives trying to achieve this step)

Maslow’s theory applied to employee Involvement: 

• Survival- The need to have a job to pay for bills, food (Basic need) which leads to minimal interaction and minimal work. Only working to pay the bills.
• Safety-job security- The more security the more involve the employees will be,
• Belonging- The need to feel apart of the organization- the ability to contribute ideas and overall success of the organization leads to more productivity
• Importance – to feel valued at an organization, to be acknowledged for a one’s work, which equals to more teamwork, and ability to contribute to a team.
• Self-Actualization- The ability to be able to move ahead in the company

 

The types of employee involvement that IBM has are;

• IBM has an open attitude towards its employee’s use of social media, and on the company website, as “IBM Social Computing Guidelines”
• In 2005, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate.”
• Using social media to make IBMers and even the public to make aware of what they’tr working on and what’s available to them. Read Casey Dugan, Research Developer story
• 5.2 and IBM Connections [IBM’s enterprise social software platform]
• 53,000 members on Social blue (Like Facebook for employees)
• Crowd-sourcing Jams.

Lessons for Others

IBM strives on keeping their IBMers always connected. Following Maslow’s theory, the idea; of self-actualization- where people want to be acknowledged for the work they do, they want the sense of belonging and the sense of belonging to an organization and having a say. Not only does employee involvement contribute to the overall success of a business, it helps create less of a turn over rate and more of an environment where employees can love.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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