The Mystery of Incentives

Levitt & Dubner, in their book Freakonomics, have explained how the power of incentives can be used to mould or radically change the behaviour of any individual. They talk about the 3 types of incentives being Financial, Moral & Social.

Taking it from there, it is safe to say that it always takes something else to attract/motivate someone else..and that truth has a lot of relevance in the world of HR.
Contrary to popular belief it is not all about the money.

It starts at the first point of contact. Organizations, today, use various media to sell themselves to the prospective employees. Some use advertising while some use social networking. Whichever may be the media what counts is the power of the message. It is what the organization gets across in that one moment that can act as an incentive to accept/ refuse the proposal. Hence, reinforcing that first impressions count. The organization, here, needs to understand their target audience and walk the podium accordingly. The right EVP/ incentive (culture, salary, career prospects etc) need to be flaunted.

Act 2 i.e. the interview, the organization needs to set the right expectations in terms of what will matter most/ what will strike the cord with the prospective employee. So, if the cause of concern is job profile then one needs to market the profile accordingly and hence convert the employee to their religion and set of beliefs.

That was the incentive story to make him walk in to the jungle but the bigger question is what will it take to make him stay?

This is when we talk of engaging the employee to the heightened levels of excellence and commitment. By employee engagement I don’t mean the number of parties thrown in a year. The engagement process is everything that it takes to engage him and get him addicted to the organization. So you start the process when the employee walks in, ensuring an enriching induction & on-boarding experience, help him form the right relationships (friends at work), provide the required hand holding (mentoring), and most importantly acquaint him with the laws of the jungle (culture) thereby increasing familiarity. Once involved in his rich role (promised job profile), he would need time to time ego boosts to make him feel wanted. Hence, recognition plays an important role. If this is not enough then the performance reviews set the stage for career development. Even when it comes to learning & development, being learning centric is not enough. One has to know the pulse of the employees. You may conduct n*100 programs but do they work with them? You might want to equip them with the most boring of all and it can be done, it just needs to be done in the right way. Use books if they like to read, Use mobiles if they are pseudo techies, use videos if they like time pass, or use role plays if they feel they are born actors.

One could easily say that everyone has a different weakness and the organization needs to use these to their advantage. However, I feel differently.. I think that ’the organization needs to use it’s advantage to ensure that the organization in itself becomes every employee’s weakness’..

Levitt & Dubner said “people respond to incentives”.. Can we assume a scenario where the organization becomes the incentive?