Exploiting Needs

One basic tenet of being a great Safety Professional is teaching a person about safety, and then getting a complete and total buy in. Wow, thats a bold statement considering how hard that can be sometimes. Humans are creatures of habit, not change. Change from what we consider the norm can be scary when you do not know the outcome. So how do we affect change?

Well one way is kind of sneaky, and psychological. It is to exploit the basic needs of every human. Many moons ago, Abraham Maslow, developed a hierarchy of five levels of basic needs.

1. Physiological Needs
2. Safety Needs
3. Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness
4. Need for Esteem
5. Needs for Self-Actualization

If we understand those needs and can use them to our advantage when teaching, the point of the instruction will become personal. Take the Need for Esteem: When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.

How can you exploit this need to get your safety message across? I look forward to comments.