Reinforce, don't reward

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

Here's a radical thought: offering your staff expensive rewards can be counterproductive. James Daniels should know - he has seen it happen. The senior vice-president of performance management consultancy Aubrey Daniels International (that's his brother) once worked at a newspaper in the United States that had a problem with missed deliveries.

So the company dreamed up an incentive scheme to solve it: at the end of a competition period of several weeks the distribution manager with the cleanest delivery record would win a trip for two to Jamaica. Great.

After about four weeks, it became obvious who would win - the distribution manager who was lucky enough to have the posh part of town as his territory. Papers there were delivered into secure letterboxes and seldom went astray.

Distribution managers with slums in their territories didn't have a hope in hell. Newspapers could be delivered to apartment doors, but there was no way to stop neighbours stealing them once the delivery person had left the floor.

Around the six-week mark, something strange happened - complaints started rolling in about missed deliveries in the posh part of town. Inexplicably, and despite the best efforts of the area's distribution manager, the problem continued.

In the end, the distribution manager who had originally been coming second won an all-expenses-paid holiday for two to Jamaica.

Some time later, the explanation emerged. Incensed at the unfairness of a competition they could never win, the distribution managers with less desirable territories got their hands on the circulation list for the posh area.

Every morning, they would ring up pretending to be customers on the list, complaining that their paper hadn't been delivered. In what was, you have to admit, a brilliant act of sabotage, they had undermined an unfair competition.

Daniels says that is a perfect illustration of why so many results-based incentive schemes don't work - they pay no attention to how results are gained or to employee effort and behaviour.

"We all know of managers who have had good results but they did nothing to contribute to them.

"We all know people who have done everything humanly possibly to make something happen ... but they failed."

Such schemes send the message that effort doesn't matter. But, says Daniels, it is only by persuading employees to put in maximum effort all the time that a company will optimise its results.

To do that, he says companies should forget about rewards and start thinking about reinforcement. So what's the difference?

"Rewards are typically for outcomes," says Daniels. "They are delayed in time and more often than not are tangible things."

Things like trips to Jamaica, $4000 bonuses, or even dinner at an up-market restaurant for a team that has met an important deadline.

While they are nice to receive, they do little to influence day-to-day behaviour and, if badly administered, can be divisive and counterproductive - as the newspaper example shows.

Rewards have their place, says Daniels, but they must meet certain criteria. Everyone must have a chance of winning the reward by improving their effort - if there's just one winner, there will be many losers and those losers will be demotivated.

Everyone should know the rules for winning the reward, those rules should be strictly adhered to, and the reward should symbolise the achievement, such as a plaque or trophy, rather than having intrinsic economic value.

But to influence day-to-day behaviour you need to work on the things that happen day-to-day, on the reinforcers that strengthen behaviours and encourage people to repeat them.

"Everything we do, we do because we get reinforced for it," says Daniels.

Think about that. If employees repeat behaviours only if they are reinforced, what does that say about continuing poor performance and complaining, stroppy workforces?

"There are cases where people deliberately goad their manager," says Daniels. "They [the managers] think that's a comment on the employee rather than the supervisor.

"If you have a workforce that is spiteful, that's a comment on management."

He gives an example of a workplace where only those who complain loudly are listened to. Sooner or later, complaining will become a habit.

"No matter what people are doing, they are doing it because their environment supports that behaviour. Rather than blaming people, what they [managers] need to do is examine the situation and find out what reinforces that behaviour."

The trick is to reinforce the workplace behaviours you want and to stop reinforcing those you don't.

And therein lies another trap for the unwary - assuming you know what motivates your workforce and reinforces their behaviour without testing your assumptions.

"Management makes the assumption that because they think it's a nice thing, everyone else will.

"But the reinforcer is always defined by the person who receives it."

In the US, it is relatively common for corporates to hold reward banquets for staff who have met certain goals, perfect attendance being one. Daniels says he has heard one employee state he would never have perfect attendance again, he was so uncomfortable at the banquet. That worked, didn't it?

So how does a manager go about using reinforcement to improve company results?

Before we get that far, a warning: it takes time and effort, and reinforcement is almost always something done by an immediate supervisor.

Chief executives can't set up company-wide reinforcement schemes because individuals are reinforced by different things. Chief executives can ensure the organisation's culture and processes support supervisors in reinforcing desired behaviour.

So, back to finding out what pushes your employees' buttons - the concept may be time-consuming, but it's simple.

First of all, says Daniels, you have to identify and quantify what business results you're interested in improving. Next you identify what changes in employee behaviour will lead to those improvements.

Then you give employees systematic feedback ("I want you to do x and I want you to do it this way") on the level of effort you want from them. And finally, when they behave as you want, you reinforce the behaviour.

The reinforcers that make a difference will often be small and seemingly insignificant. "Almost everyone appreciates when someone else says a kind word about what they have done," says Daniels.

But remember, you can't take this for granted - so find out what works for the people you supervise.

First, try asking them. "There's a problem with that, in that many people don't know and many people will tell you what they think you want to hear," says Daniels. Even so, asking will yield a wealth of information.

Second, see what they choose to do. "Do they volunteer for extra assignments ... do they prefer certain kinds of jobs over others?" asks Daniels. Whatever they are choosing to do is a reinforcer.

And third, listen to them. What do they talk about doing in the weekend? Fishing? Spending time with grandchildren? Gardening? The wine club? Whatever they spend their spare time on is a potential reinforcer - use it.

I suggest this all sounds nice and Daniels riles at the suggestion. He doesn't like that word much. "Our approach is pretty hard-nosed. It's about accomplishment and organisational performance."

And second, he says, it misses the point that it's not the manager's job to be "nice" but rather to motivate employees to produce discretionary effort and meet the company's objectives.

He suggests how an effective manager would reply to an accusation of "niceness" or lack thereof: "I'm always going to be a nice person, whether you are a good or a bad employee. But people earn reinforcement, so there are some things you can only get from me by earning them."

And you'll only get the behaviour you want if you reinforce it.