Most people only know what happened;
only those who know this technology
know what’s possible.
Most American workers admit they could do a better job if they were properly motivated. In a “Public Agenda Report on Restoring America’s Competitive Vitality,” Yankelovich and Immerwahr (1983) reported that fewer than one out of four employees, 23 percent, said they that were performing to their full potential and capacity. The majority agreed that they could increase their effectiveness significantly. Nearly half the workforce, 44 percent, revealed that they did what is required of them and held back any extra effort. Amazingly, despite all the initiatives, articles, books, and training that have surfaced since 1983, engagement remains at essentially the same level as it was over 30 years ago.
Can you imagine what could be accomplished by our workforce if every employee worked up to his or her full potential every day? The question that every business leader should be asking is, How do we motivate people to “want to” do their best rather than doing only what they “have to”? To answer this question, you need to understand the concept of discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is defined as that level of effort people could give if they wanted to but is beyond what is required. In other words, because discretionary effort is above and beyond what is expected, demanded, paid for, and planned for, there would be no punishment to the performers if they didn’t do it. Discretionary effort is what is possible. In many organizations today, management is happy just to get what is expected.
Discretionary effort is within the power of every individual to give or withhold. All of us have “given a little extra” on many occasions, usually on projects that held some special interest for us. Most often this extra effort was expended on a project at home or in some activity that we enjoy.
The only way business can capture discretionary effort is through the effective use of positive reinforcement. As Russell Justice, retired industrial engineer at Eastman Chemicals, has said:
Discretionary effort is like loose change in employees’ pockets. It is management’s job to get them to want to spend it all every day. Positive reinforcement is clearly the most effective way to manage any business. Nevertheless, of all the ways to manage, it is the most misunderstood and misused. When most people hear the words “positive reinforcement,” they immediately think of things like “atta-boys,” a pat on the back, a service plaque, a round of applause at a company meeting, or some kind of public recognition like “Employee of the Month.” “Isn’t that what you are talking about when you say positive reinforcement?” they ask me. My reply is always the same. “Absolutely not!” This shallow understanding of positive reinforcement is what prevents many managers from using it to motivate employees and improve performance.
Let me remind you of the definition of positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is any consequence that follows a behavior and increases its frequency in the future. The fact is that most of what motivates us day to day are the little things that people do that make a big difference.
If you ask people if they received any positive reinforcement at work yesterday, most would say no. In fact, everybody at work gets positive reinforcement thousands of times every day. When you walk into your office and flip on the light switch, you get positively reinforced when the light comes on. When you pull open a desk drawer, your behavior is positively reinforced by the drawer opening. When you press your pen on a piece of paper and it makes a mark, you are positively reinforced for using the pen. When you call somebody’s name, you get positively reinforced by that person responding. Every time I push a key on my computer and the correct letter appears on the screen, my key-press behavior is positively reinforced.
When you understand positive reinforcement in this context, you see how frequently it occurs in everyday functioning. If reinforcement were not built into these performances, the behavior would stop. If I pushed a computer key and never got the right letter on the screen or no letter appeared, I would quickly stop pressing the keys. If I flipped a light switch and the light never came on, I would quickly stop flipping the switch.
Apple Computer gets the credit for coming up with the concept of “user-friendly.” This was a stroke of genius because early in the development of computers, most people were not positively reinforced for trying to use them. “User-friendly” is another word for positive reinforcement. At some level at least, the developers at Apple understood that if their computers were easier to use than their competitors’ computers (more positively reinforcing to the user), their market would be greatly expanded.
The mouse, menus, and help screens are all attempts to put positive reinforcement into using a computer. These days many computer programs are so reinforcing that if you know how to turn the computer on, you can use it. The antecedent “Press any key to start” guarantees that anyone who can read will get reinforced. Let me define positive reinforcement another way.
Positive reinforcement occurs every time a behavior produces a favorable change in the environment for the performer.
The problem with most work is that it has not been designed so that positive reinforcement occurs as a natural part of the process. For example, a clerk processing insurance claims does not get positively reinforced every time he processes a claim. Why? Because while the clerk is completing one claim, two more are added to the pile. The only natural consequence of processing the claims faster is getting more claims to process. It is easy to see why someone who has been processing claims for any period of time would lose his sense of urgency.
In tasks like these, management has to do something to put positive reinforcement into the job or people will never do their best. At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, when management engineered positive reinforcement into the claims adjudication process, performance increased almost 300 percent! Although this result is outstanding, it has been duplicated many times in many different jobs.
There are two ways for positive reinforcement to occur: naturally and created. The examples of reinforcement illustrated earlier were natural reinforcement. Natural reinforcement occurs when the behavior automatically produces it. Pushing the button on a water fountain automatically produces reinforcement in the form of water. Natural reinforcers do not require the presence of another person.
Created reinforcement does not occur automatically but must be added by a person. A congratulatory note, praise, public acknowledgment, money, a plaque, and trophies are all forms of created reinforcement.
The two most common forms of created reinforcement are social and tangible. Social reinforcement is reinforcement that involves doing or saying something to another person. Social reinforcement includes symbolic reinforcement and anything that has trophy value. In this context, trophy value means that the trophy or symbolic reinforcer would have value only to the person or persons receiving it. Tangible reinforcement is a positive reinforcer that has salvage value, that is, something that would have value to someone else.
The most available form of created reinforcement is social reinforcement. You do not have to have a budget for it, you do not need permission to give it, and when it is given correctly, people never tire of it.
Tangible reinforcement should serve as a backup to social reinforcement—not a substitute for it. A client of ours knew that early attempts at positive reinforcement were in trouble when a supervisor, handing out merchandise earned with points for improved quality, told an employee, “Here’s your damn toaster. Now get your butt back to work!”
I’ll bet toast from that toaster never tasted good. In all likelihood, every time that employee looked at the toaster, it reminded him of somebody he hated. All tangible reinforcers should be paired with social reinforcement.
It’s An Individual Thing. Whether natural or created, what is reinforcing to a person is highly individualistic. Some people like mechanical things; others hate them. Some people like sports; others don’t. Some people like to be with people; others like to be alone. Whatever you can name, you will find people who like it and people who don’t.
This means that in order to reinforce effectively, you must first understand what people want or like to spend time or effort to obtain. Because reinforcement is an individual thing, this approach to management is the most employee focused of all the current approaches. What works with one person may not work with another. If you are looking for something that will work for everybody, stop. You won’t find it. It doesn’t exist.
This may sound too difficult or time-consuming, but it’s not. The advantages you gain from increased performance make it well worth treating people as individuals—not to mention the improvement in interpersonal relationships that will result.
What Do They Want Anyway? Finding Reinforcers. There are three ways of finding what is reinforcing: ask, try, and observe. Although common sense tells most people that the first thing you would do if you don’t know is to ask, common sense would fail you again.
Try Something. Usually, the best way to start positive reinforcement is to try something that you think might work. Most of the time, it will work because people generally find attempts at reinforcement to be reinforcing. If you make a mistake trying to positively reinforce, people generally will forgive you.
What do you try? You try things that others have found to be effective. Attention is usually a positive reinforcer because it shows that you are interested in what a person is doing. If you give approval for a particular action taken, it probably will be received as positive reinforcement. Most people like to be appreciated, so anything that demonstrates that you value them and their efforts likely will be reinforcing. Remember, you will know you have positively reinforced a particular behavior if you try and the behavior increases. If it doesn’t, try again.
Ask. The reason that asking should not be the first thing you do to discover what is reinforcing is that you may run into one or more of the following problems: (1) people may not know, (2) they may not want to tell you, (3) they may tell you what they think you want them to say rather than what they really want, and (4) asking may set up false expectations.
For these reasons, asking is not the first way to find reinforcers. Rather, after you have tried something, ask employees how they liked what you did. At this point they have a frame of reference against which to suggest other things that are likely to be acceptable. For example, if you bought lunch to reward some specific improvement in performance, when you ask what other things would be reinforcing, it is unlikely your employees will say “an extra week off with pay.” In other words, your initial attempt will establish realistic expectations for what you can afford as positive reinforcers.
Observe. You can discover a lot of potential reinforcers simply by observing what people spend their time doing when they have a choice. Many reinforcers also can be discovered just by talking to people or, better yet, by listening to them. Unfortunately, we are so busy telling people what we want that we have little time left over to listen to what they want.
Psychologist David Premack discovered in his research that when people are given a choice of things to do, whatever they consistently choose can be used as a reinforcer for the behaviors not chosen. His discovery is called the Premack principle. This has been more simply translated by Dr. Ogden Lindsley, who called it “Grandma’s law.”
Grandma’s law states, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have dessert.” Eating vegetables is a low-frequency choice for most children. Eating dessert is a high-frequency choice. When the high-frequency choice is made contingent on the low-frequency choice, children not only eat more vegetables, but they may learn over time to like them.
At work, this means that if we watch how people spend their time when they have a choice, it can be used as a reinforcer for them. If a mechanic spends most of his unassigned time repairing electric motors instead of doing something else, we can assume that repairing electric motors is a reinforcer to that mechanic. If when given a choice of leads a salesperson paid on a commission always chooses to call on large companies rather than small ones, that would tell us that the opportunity to call on a large client could be used as a reinforcer for that salesperson.
Grandma’s law has some personal applications, too. In fact, it represents the best time-management technique available today. Here’s how it works: make a list of all the things you need to do. Rank them from the things you most want to do or enjoy doing to the things you least like to do. Then start working at the bottom of the list.
If you do this, you will notice an interesting phenomenon as you complete tasks. When you start at the bottom, every time you finish a task, the next one on the list is more desirable, enjoyable, or interesting. If you start at the top, where most people start, the consequence of completing a task is that the next one is more undesirable, difficult, boring, and so on. In the latter approach, you look for an excuse to quit. In the former, you don’t want to quit until all the tasks are done, and if you stop in the middle, you can’t wait to get started again.
A number of years ago, Gary Lorgan, department manager of Kodak’s Image Loops and Sundries Department, put Grandma’s law to the test. The Image Loops and Sundries Department produced image loops for Kodak’s Ektaprint copiers.
Lorgan observed that the operators in his department enjoyed working on special work-related projects, usually team activities aimed at improving production quality and the production process. Of course, improvement in both areas was beneficial to the organization, so Lorgan and production supervisor Karyn Johnson decided to use team activities to reinforce the operators for meeting weekly production and quality standards. Lorgan explains:
When the operators reach their weekly goal for each type of loop, we shut down production and let them work on other projects. In these small team activities, the operators, at their own initiative, develop ideas for improving the operation and break into teams of 2 to 10 people to implement them.
We have had 15 or 20 improvements that have been made right on the production line as a result of the operators’ team activities. Our production quotas are not easy to meet, but there have been times when we’ve made the goal late on Thursday and had the entire day Friday for team activities. Other times we’ve made goal just before the end of the shift or didn’t make the weekly quota at all. There is no guarantee they will make it every week, but when they do, we turn them loose on their special interest projects.
The operators thrive on the challenge. They monitor their own progress on a large 6- by 10-foot bar graph. Their graphs reflect cumulative effort, and each team has its own color to designate its contribution to production. The color-coded production measures make each team’s results visible. This way, they get feedback on how they are doing and how they are contributing toward the weekly goal. Highly visible daily feedback toward a common goal has inspired the operators to find ways to help each other eliminate unnecessary activities, for example, paperwork and testing.
They are so anxious to move on to their special projects that on three occasions, some operators have finished early and volunteered to continue working to make up a previous week’s shortfall. They were able to get to their team activities those weeks, and they seemed to enjoy catching up. So that quality doesn’t take a back seat to quantity, the operators perform random daily quality audits, graphing those results as well.
Since starting the team activities, production has gone up, but Lorgan sees this as the side benefit of Grandma’s law. He is pleased with the production increase but remarks, “Our primary goal is not to increase productivity but to maintain it while emphasizing quality.” Operational improvements made by the teams are the real plus for day-to-day operations. “The best thing about it is [that] the improvements are their ideas, and they feel good about it in the end.”
As I discussed earlier, positive reinforcement surrounds us at work. As illustrated by Grandma’s law, it can even come from the work itself. But it also comes from peers, supervisors and managers, and the environment.
The term operant conditioning was introduced by B. F. Skinner to explain the primary way in which we learn. What he meant was that a behavior that operates on the environment to produce a desirable effect for the person will be strengthened (i.e., it will occur more frequently in the future).
When we do things that “work,” we are positively reinforced by the task itself. Things that go smoother or are easier when done a certain way typically will always be done that way. The “user-friendly” computer described earlier is a good example of work-related reinforcement. Anytime we can arrange a task so that reinforcement is automatically associated with the task, that task will more likely be repeated.
The concept of job enrichment was a well-intentioned attempt to put reinforcement into the work, but it generally has failed to meet that objective. Job simplification and job enlargement have met similar fates. Whether a clerk completes part of a form or all of the form makes little difference if the only consequence is that he or she has another form to complete. Whether a person on an assembly line puts the door on a car or builds the whole car makes little difference if good performance is taken for granted and poor performance is criticized. Building the complete car can be just as boring as putting on doors—after you’ve done it 20,000 times.
These efforts at making work more interesting have not succeeded because rearranging or changing the tasks is not (and never was) the issue. What has to be rearranged in the work process is positive reinforcement. Finding ways to put reinforcement into the work itself is a great first step and one that should be taken by every manager and supervisor. Grandma’s law is worth trying. I will give some additional direction on how to make work more reinforcing later. However, even if reinforcement is built into the job, it will rarely be enough to bring out the best in people. Other sources of reinforcement must be tapped.
Peers are the most effective source of reinforcement at work—and the most underutilized. Peers are in the best position to deliver positive and immediate reinforcement (positive, immediate, and certain consequences [PICs]) because they can observe performance more closely and more often than most supervisors and managers.
This source of reinforcement is rarely tapped by organizations. The problem is that most employees have never learned that it is a part of their responsibility to provide reinforcement to their peers. Worse, they are not reinforced by management when they do. The whole concept of teams has missed the mark on peer reinforcement and, as a result, has had little measurable success in improving organizational performance. Instead of using the proximity of peers to provide one another with positive reinforcement for work-related behaviors, organizations have focused teams on making process improvements. Process improvement is, of course, very important. However, without attention to the reinforcement of team members by team members, teams produce relatively few improvements and never achieve their potential. Often teams stay together but are a team in name only.
When peers recognize that they can and should be a major source of reinforcement for each other, improvements occur more frequently, much faster, and last much longer.
Since management has the overall responsibility for performance, it also has the responsibility for coordinating reinforcement. This is not to say that managers are responsible for providing all reinforcement. As I’ve noted, managers are responsible for providing the appropriate consequences for performance, and the most important consequence they can provide is positive reinforcement. But it is not practical and, in fact, it is not possible for managers and supervisors to provide all the reinforcement employees will receive. The job of management is to ensure that reinforcement occurs for the right behavior, at the necessary frequency, and from all sources available. Planning and delivering reinforcement are the two most important behaviors of supervisors and managers.
The manager who can harness the power of positive reinforcement for value-added performance will be the manager who can capture and enjoy the benefits that discretionary effort provides for the people and the company.