Imagination to address Employee Hierarchy of Needs
How do you retain staff; a new idea has emerged from author Shep Hyken. In Forbes magazine, he outlines an Employee Hierarchy of Needs, his own creation inspired from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The two areas where fostering an imagination can help are at the top of the pyramid. Growth and fulfilment.
“Most employees want to grow,” writes Hyken. “They want to know there are opportunities to learn new skills, advance their careers and feel more enriched.”
How can imagination help employees to grow?
Taking steps to foster imagination in workplaces can boost resilience in wellbeing (imagination connects us to hope, joy and optimism) and also, can help us to grow professional skills such as problem solving, decision making and critical thinking skills to examine and often resolve problems or issues in unique ways.
At the very top of Hyken’s pyramid is ‘fulfilment’ which is related to human-to-human connections, a wish to better know one another and benefit from the day-to-day interactions at work. Hyken describes it as an ‘emotional connection’.
“If you want your best employees to stay, they must love working for you,” he writes. :That means they love their jobs, they love the people they work with and they love their boss. They also feel appreciated for what they bring to the company.”
How can imagination help to build fulfilment?
Imagination can help grow meaningful connections in a workplace. In my experiential Imagination Sessions, colleagues get to know each other in a unique way that fosters the sharing of ideas and encourages skills such as collaboration, negotiation and improved communication.
These sessions offer a brief respite from the stresses and strains of our daily workloads. Because to truly know imagination, we must allow ourselves to dream. And when we dream, laughter is often near. This is a wonderful way to connect in a unique way that incorporates play and learning along a pathway to ideas generation and, sometimes, offers the seeds for innovation.
