If fast food workers are taught to say “would you like fries with that?” and reinforced for doing so, people really do buy more fries. The staff are satisfied with the program, people buy more food, and the business makes more money.
There is a lot of evidence that reinforcement systems can make a large difference in staff performance. Certainly, if you provide reinforcement for staff to engage in certain behaviors, you will likely see increases in those behaviors. If those behaviors are carefully targeted to important results, the whole organization will improve. The logic is impeccable.
Many argue that these types of systems can be used in any type of organization for any type of job. It doesn’t matter how complex the job is. Just implement the research-based procedures, and you will get great results. Maybe that is true, I’m open to the idea. I’ve worked in lots of organizations and seen many types of systems like this. Sometimes they seem to work, but other times there are unintended consequences.
For example, I once worked in an organization that evaluated staff partially based on the percentage of behavior change programs moving in the desired direction. I was talking to the supervisor about the fact that one student didn’t seem to have enough to do during the day. I gave the supervisor a list of ideas of things we could teach that might be beneficial for the student. The supervisor suggested we wait three weeks until after the evaluations were completed, and the percentage of behavior change programs in the desired direction was measured. That way, if any of the new programs didn’t work out, we wouldn’t be penalized on the measurements.
The benefits of behavior change programs moving in the desired direction are obvious. We can see that. But by using that as a measure to evaluate staff, the implementation of new programs was delayed. That response to the reinforcement system is not immediately obvious. What about things we decide not to even attempt because it might mess up the percentage of behavior changes in the desired direction?
The problem, as I see it, is that the positive results of these types of interventions are obvious. The negative results are hard to measure. Many managers I’ve talked to about this concern tend to downplay the importance of this problem—”It doesn’t happen to me.” But I’ve seen it here, and here, and also here, so I’m a bit skeptical.
Sure, reinforcement systems for staff behavior are often important. Just realize that they have to be very carefully designed. One thing that I think is often overlooked is figuring out what types of negative effects the systems might be causing, and taking preventative action when needed.