Maslow's Theory Of Employee Motivation

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Walmart, the retailer and the employer…..4
Chapter 2 The employee motivation: A theoretical approach………..5 Section 2.1 Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy Theory……………………..5 Section 2.2 Equity Theory……..………………………………………………7 Section 2.3 Four-Drive Theory……………………………………………….8

Chapter 1 Introduction: Walmart, the retailer and the employer

Walmart is a multinational retail corporation which was founded on 1962 by Sam Walton. The company started with a small shop in Bentonville, Arkansas and now operates worldwide with discount department stores and warehouse stores in North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Totally, there are over eleven thousands shops in twenty-seven different

According to this, the needs of an employee can be divided in five different categories and each one of them has a special importance. This model can be applied in a Walmart employee also in order to better understand how the company functions in terms of employee motivation. At the bottom of the pyramid there are the physiological needs which are the basic and most important. If these are not covered, then an employee can’t pursuit the path of self-fulfillment and self-actualization. The wages in Walmart have been a subject of major discussion. Workers in the stores get paid with the federal minimum of $7,25 and have repeatedly asked for a raise that will increase their hourly salary to $15. Truth be told, the federal minimum is pretty low and in many cases can’t be enough for a worker who has to raise a family or has in general many needs. The protests for this issue are many and the last one took place on 10/17/2014 when the employees tried to give to heiress Alice Walton a petition signed by 1,695 Walmart stores for this

In order to aspire to higher levels of the pyramid, an employee must first satisfy the lower layers. However, Walmart offers some extra benefits to the employees. They offer special discounts that vary according to your position, health and life insurance and a 401k savings plan. Although the health and life insurance have been described as expensive, the 401k plan is considered to be an interesting deal. Through that, an employee can make direct savings from his paycheck without any taxation. It should be added finally, that in October of 2014 Walmart announced that they were cutting all the benefits from workers that were working for less than 30 hours per week. The total number of workers that will be affected from this is approximately thirty thousand