Nudging the Employees

Humans being provided with a predictable irrationality; our work habits can be influenced by the shared interest of a company and collaborators. A new tool in the array of HR and management methods? Precisely, because working groups on nudging turn out to be often more efficient than the implementation of strict and constraining procedures.

Generation Y’s (and the following) aversion to authority and hierarchy is well known and makes nudging now almost mandatory. Nudging is this soft influence that enables to escape from rigid formalization while encouraging behaviours that benefit the greatest number of people. Indeed, this smooth approach lies precisely between benevolence, freedom and the collective common sense. Promoting employees’ diversity and inclusion and encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviour within the company are as many ambitious objectives for which nudging can turn out to be a great support. Its little things that change everything …

How to save paper and ink effective immediately without any infantilizing and threatening memo? By relying on our tendency to prefer the default proposal: simply change the automatic print settings (black and white, recto/verso, several pages per sheet) without suppressing the freedom of personalisation on a case-by-case basis.

How to encourage women to apply for internally published positions of responsibility? To address this concern, Alan Eustace, former Google vice-president, used to send an e-mail to his female collaborators during the promotion period. He recalled on one hand that women raise less their hand than men when they are asked to solve a mathematical problem, while having a better success rate when doing so. However on the other hand that in meetings, women do not share as much their ideas as men do, even if observers noted that their ideas are often more relevant than the ones suggested by their male counterparts. And when he “forgot” to send this message …the number of applications dropped again.

How to foster team spirit and horizontal links within an organization? The phygital “nudged” workspace that rethinks the balance between digital usages and physical interactions at work is a possible answer. Moving some of the teams of Société Générale Bank & Trust (SGBT) into the new Carrefour building complex in Luxembourg is an example. 

How to reduce the absenteeism of collaborators that registered for training? Focus on leveraging potential loss (the human being is by nature more afraid of losing than desiring to win), suggesting a system where every collaborator starts the year with a right to 4 half days of training per year: one absence to a half-day leading automatically to the loss of one additional amongst the “remaining rights”.

It is obviously a question of adapting the nudge concept to each organisation and its needs to initiate the necessary changes smoothly. Once the need is identified, it's then worth thinking about the nudge through the principles of behavioural psychology and test results.

To be read also in the dossier "Nudge":

• A Strategy  that Hits the Target!