Using Maslow’s Theories to Keep Employee Engagement High During Business Transformation
2 April 2025
This next instalment of our blogs on business transformation uses theories derived from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to provide practical ways to keep employee engagement high during business transformation. Discover how to create and measure human-centric KPIs, overcome resistance, and ensure employees are motivated and fulfilled.
Summary:
Five Ways to Keep Employee Engagement High During Business Transformation
Overcoming Resistance: Addressing Needs at Each Stage of Change
Measuring Success: Beyond KPIs - Evaluating Human Impact
The Future of Transformation: Prioritising People in a Changing World
Keep Employee Engagement High During Business Transformation with Pluxee UK
This is the second of two blogs on business transformation inspired by our blog, ‘How Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can transform your employee engagement strategy’. The first blog, ‘Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Business Transformation’, explores the ways five common reasons for business transformation can negatively affect employees’ ability to meet their needs at all stages of the pyramid and the long-term effect this can have on your business.
The focus of this blog is to explore how we can use Maslow’s theories to keep employee engagement high during change and transformation, overcoming resistance, and what the future of transformation ought to look like.
Five Ways to Keep Employee Engagement High During Business Transformation
Here are five ways to keep employees motivated, engaged and bought-in to the transformation process.
1. Find Influencers
We touch on this a little in the first blog in this series, but influencers matter - it’s why social media influencers are becoming millionaires. People listen to them. Your workforce is more likely to believe an employee influencer than a leader when they’re uneasy about transformation plans. Find a popular, trusted, respected colleague to advocate for change, and they’ll help others become enthused.
2. Create Engaging Messaging
It’s crucial to convey the facts internally and externally, as business transformation can also affect clients, partners and consumers. Number one rule… ensure your employees are the first to know.
Whenever you plan to share external communications, you ought to notify your employees first. Make them your top priority, as it will pay dividends among your wider community. Employees will want to know the facts, but you should mix up how you share messages to keep them engaged with a mix of face-to-face, video and written messages.
3. Motivate from the Heart
Keep Maslow’s theories in mind when considering how to motivate employees, or your engagement and communications strategy may miss the mark. Consider emotional triggers and emphasise the benefits of the transformation so it speaks to employees on a personal level.
4. Show, Don't Tell
If you’re bringing in new technology or products, let your employees get their hands on them - literally. The best way to get employees excited and engaged with new tech is by letting them experiment with it as soon as possible. To begin with, this could be a digital demonstration, walking them through the features and allowing them to ask questions. From there, let them have early access so they have plenty of time to adapt.
Peer super users are also a good idea as they can troubleshoot and sing the product's praises.
5. Promote the Right Behaviours and Listen
It’s vital to make transformation a two-way street. It’s not something that you should do to employees, but with them. Gather employee feedback and respond to it - it’ll make employees feel listened to and valued, boosting their self-esteem and engagement.
As we mentioned in the first part of this series, ‘Applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Business Transformation’, recognising employees who embrace new ways of working and behaviours will encourage them to repeat their actions and inspire others to follow suit. Our eVouchers make for effective ad hoc rewards, and our Virtual Pluxee Card fits nicely into a longer-term rewards and engagement strategy.
Overcoming Resistance: Addressing Needs at Each Stage of Change
Many employees will likely be resistant, and for different reasons. Some personalities are less accepting of change - it’s just how they are. They may need time to adjust, and effective communication will help get their buy-in.
Let’s refer to the theory at hand and the impact change has on our employees’ physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation needs. The transformation will impact employees at various levels of the pyramid, as will the different stages of change.
Always put yourself in your employees’ shoes, asking yourself, ‘How would this make me feel?’
- If it would make you worry about keeping a roof over your family’s head, you must ensure you’re addressing the fundamental, physiological need.
- If you think a specific part of the transformation could affect employees’ trust in leaders, ensure you act transparently and openly.
- If changes could lead to you questioning whether you still belong with your business, help employees see where they fit in your long-term plans.
- If a transformation has employees questioning their value and worth, heap on the praise and recognition so they’re never in doubt.
- If new processes and technology skew your perception of your development path, set plans in motion for your workforce to upskill.
Keep human emotions at the core of every part of the transformation to ensure high employee morale and engagement.
Measuring Success: Beyond KPIs - Evaluating Human Impact
Business transformation projects will have many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), such as delivering projects to set timings and costs. What about KPIs relating to human impact? How do we evaluate them?
Evaluating the human impact of a project is vital because it allows you to identify other elements that could affect the success of a transformation, like a mass resignation...
Get to Grips with Employee Sentiment
Before you start any transformation within your workplace, run an employee engagement survey to measure how employees feel about your business. For any projects spanning over a year or more, running another survey halfway through the process would be wise.
However, you should allow for continuous employee feedback and check-ins to ensure you understand their views.
- Low engagement and morale = less productivity.
- Additional stress = increase in absenteeism.
- Loss of faith in the business = higher employee turnover.
You see the picture we’re painting. Not paying attention to the human impact will negatively affect your bottom line.
The Future of Transformation: Prioritising People in a Changing World
Project-related KPIs will never disappear. They’re fundamental to keeping things in check and on track so that budgets don’t spiral out of control.
The world is changing - fast. AI Anxiety is real, and people fear it may eventually take over their profession. When a project involves digital transformation, it shouldn’t be a shock that employees may have real concerns.
When employees are worried or stressed, it will impact their work, so there are financial grounds for embracing a people-centric approach beyond the 'being a good human' argument.
Let’s advocate for future transformation projects to include KPIs on:
- Employee stress levels.
- Employee happiness.
- Employee advocacy.
- Employee engagement.
- Employee emotional wellbeing.
- Employee mental wellbeing.
We could add more to the list, and as long as it focuses on people, you can't really go wrong.
Keep Employee Engagement High During Business Transformation with Pluxee UK
The times they are a-changin’ and have been long since Bob Dylan penned his song, and they will continue to do so long after we write this blog. Change - progress - change for the sake of progress, whatever your take on it may be, it will happen.
What’s vital to retain as we embrace the inevitable is the human element - the people behind the processes - their wellbeing, their peace of mind, and even their future.
Join us in putting people at the heart of everything!
