
The idea makes sense on its face, but incentive programs are
often a lot more problematic than meets the eye. Based on our experience and
understanding of the social science research, we have a few words of caution
for any who are looking to implement such a program.
1. Trying to fix the wrong problem. As we
said, often we add incentives to get employees to do the things we want them to
do. This assumes that the problem is that the employee is not properly
motivated to do what we want them to do, and if the problem is inside of the
employee then the fix is to fix the employee by adding the incentive. Perhaps
though the problem is that there are other contextual factors leading to the
behavior, either in the physical environment, or in the organizational/cultural
environment. Adding another incentive to counter other incentives may just be
adding noise. Perhaps a better solution is to fix the context of the
work. Or, perhaps the problem is with your understanding of how the work
should be done, not with the employee.
2. Rewarding bad behavior. You always need
to remember that incentives work at incentivizing people to get the incentive,
whether or not they do what you want them to do is a separate question. The
classic example is incentivizing injury reductions or lack of injuries. This
works at lowering the numbers, but at least part of the reduction is because of
hiding of injuries. So you want to avoid that. Carefully consider what you want
to incentivize and think about all of the ways people can get the
incentive.
3. Incentives insensitive to context. Too
many times incentives just fall into the Taylorism (LINK) trap of determining
the one best method to do the job and assuming that this never changes. There
are very few rules that apply in all cases. Get your employees involved in
determining what you want to incentivize so that they can ensure that the thing
you’re incentivizing is sensitive to the context they work in. We
recommend you talk to your employees about the things you want to incentivize and
ask them what their perspective is on why they aren’t doing what you expect of
them. Make sure this is done in a “no fault” environment and is done in the
spirit of learning, not teaching. You will then be in a better place to
determine what the problems really are, which should then lead you to the
solutions.
4. Too much of an incentive. Social science
research shows that if you are trying to alter behavior, sometimes a smaller
incentive is better than a larger incentive. Sometimes intangibles are better
than tangibles. Many people assume that you have to give them something of
significant external value, when sometimes simple recognition by peers is
enough. People are motivated by psychological needs, as well as external needs,
and one of those needs is mastery. Another is relatedness. If you appeal to
those needs you can sometimes get a more powerful response, while also
appealing to people’s humanity. This builds trust and understanding more than
external incentives tend to do.
5. Too much at once. If a program is trying
to change too much at once it will be very hard to manage, meaning that there
will be inconsistent application of the incentive, which will cause employees
to lose trust in the program and become cynical. It needs to be consistently
applied, so start small. If you start small that will also help you work out
some of the bugs in the system early.
We hope these
at least give you food for thought with any incentive programs you have or are
building. We also hope that you have a happy Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza,
Festivus, or holiday, and a Happy New Year!