Posts Tagged ‘Reinforcer’

Behavior is a function of its consequence. Employees tend to focus their activities on the things with the highest pay-off. For these activities, it is important to show the instrumentality between a goal achieved and reward earned. In other words, what will the employee receive as a result of their achievement? The biggest difference between an employee reward and a reinforcer is the immediacy of the consequence. Rewards tend to be latent and monetary; Reinforcers need to occur daily and shape behavior as it happens. It is much better for the manager/employee to correct problems as they happen instead of waiting for the annual review.

One issue with focal/anniversary reviews is the goal period. Focal reviews tend to measure on a yearly or 6 month basis. The pay-off of the reward is too far in the future. The certainty of getting the reward needs to be present in order for the program to be successful. If your company does not have a history of celebrating successes, then you will be challenged to put forth a credible reward system.

So how do managers motivate their employees?

Your manager needs to ask these 3 questions of his/her employees to motivate them:

1) Do you anticipate your employee being satisfied with achieving the goal? (This is Valence – or anticipated satisfaction) – If this isn’t present than the activity is a non-starter for them.

2) What will he/she receive when it is achieved? (This is Instrumentality) – This is where a point/reward system comes in. What will I get if I achieve? This is the key factor of the 3.

3) Will the effort put forth actually yield achievement of the goal? (This is Effort Expectancy) If the employee knows that extraordinary effort is required for little payback, then they are not likely exhibit behaviors to achieve the goal.

(abridged from Organizational Behavior, Securing Competitive Advantage, John Hollenbeck and John Wagner, 2005)

So how do you reinforce behaviors that will accomplish your motivational techniques? Here is one system that your company can implement:

Establish a Company-wide Point System

Establish a point budget. Just as monies are allocated for budgets, management should set a point budget based on the available rewards. These allocations happen just as a budget for merit increases would. Points can be allocated using your incentive compensation/salary planning solution. Give each of your front-line managers a bank of points, much like a merit budget, to be used to divvy up among employees. Points should be given based on the employee performance for the month. Increasing the frequency of the consequence will lead to daily/weekly performance improvements.

Be as creative as you want here. Assign a point total to each reward. Since reinforcement and rewards are highly individualistic, you may want to give managers the flexibility to create their own. As employees accumulate rewards, they can cash them in for one of the services provided in your reward point catalog:

• Cooking classes
• Golf membership for one year
• Free Spa day
• Gym membership for one year
• Titanium DirecTV package
• Housecleaning for one year
• Dog boarding for one year
• Daycare for one year
• Lease on an exotic car
• Manicure/Pedicure
• First class upgrade on all business flights
• Free car wash
• 2 round-trip airline tickets
• Day-off with pay
• Week off with pay
• Lunch with the CEO
• Golf with the CEO
etc….

I think you get the picture. You should also create rewards that have no added cost to the company. Steve Kerr, former GE SVP of HR, has written extensively on cost-neutral rewards. He advocates that these types of rewards should be visible making them highly powerful. Monetary awards don’t give companies that luxury.