Want to create a safer, more productive or more innovative workplace? Understanding behavioural science interventions could help.

From the moment we clock in for work each day, we’re hit with nudges designed to influence our behaviour in some way. 

Sometimes they’re overt – for example, your boss yells because you forgot an important meeting. Other times, they’re less obvious: a pop-up on your computer reminding you to take a break or a professional development hour that’s been booked into your diary by your manager.

Changing people’s behaviour is no easy task. In fact, when done incorrectly, it can force people to dig their heels in deeper. But when you understand the basic principles of behavioural science, you start learning more about how to influence the cognitive processes that drive human behaviour.

“We need to make a distinction between behavioural science as a tool, which is how people usually think about it, versus behavioural science as a lens,” says Dilip Soman,  Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Science and Economics, Professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and Director of Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman Research Centre.

“We need to see problems differently. Problems aren’t about pushing things through a system, they aren’t about incentivising, they aren’t about mandating. It’s about understanding the psychological friction points that prevent people [from taking action].”

Here are five tips to keep in mind when trying to add a behavioural science lens to your decision-making.

1. Make it easy: remove friction points

Much as the goals we set ourselves at the beginning of a new year often fall to the wayside – or fail – so too can our efforts to influence behavioural change at work.

Maybe you’re trying to get your employees to become more active participants in your social plans, or you want to nudge them towards more productive ways of working. 

As HRM has previously covered, trying to persuade someone with data, logic and information alone is often a losing battle. You need to learn how to get under the hood of the human condition and subtly influence from within.

“A huge amount of human decision-making is automatic,” says James Healy, Principal of Human Capital at Deloitte. “We’ve developed as a species with this belief that we’re in control and that we’re conscious beings who are deciding our actions and our behaviours.”

But that’s not true. In a Deloitte report, Putting Behaviour First Change, Healy and his co-author Daniel Cogan FCPHR, Manager of Human Capital Consulting at Deloitte, talk about how each day we make thousands of automatic decisions based on factors such as what others are doing or what we’ve done before that worked. These mental shortcuts help conserve our brain’s energy, and they can also be used as a force for good in a work context.

Read HRM’s article on nudge theory.

To capitalise on our automatic decision-making tendencies, we need to remove friction points. In your personal life, that might mean sleeping in your gym clothes to avoid the barrier of having to find your clothes and get dressed to make it to your early-morning gym class.

Soman has seen first-hand the power that removing friction points can have on employee behaviour. He refers to an experiment he did with a corporate partner in the US to boost employees’ annual health check-ups, which are a common employee benefit in some global organisations, he says.

“But only around 18 per cent of people [were going]. Some people might say they’re too busy to go, but that’s not true. It takes all of an hour. And who doesn’t have that time at one point in the year? 

“I’m not suggesting that every HR department has to become an academic science department, but I think we need to have a bit more humility and be open to the idea that not everyone knows everything; humans are incredibly complex.” – James Healy, Principal, Human Capital, Deloitte

“So I did an experiment where we randomly assigned people to appointments. We’d say, ‘You’re booked in on this date and if you’re not able to make it, just give them a call.’ 

“This act of simply changing the default pushed that 18 per cent to about 65 or 66 per cent. People weren’t busy at all, they just didn’t want to pick up the phone. When you realise that it’s the little stuff that causes friction points, you see the world completely differently.

“One of the gurus of behavioural science, Richard Thaler, says you don’t really need to understand psychology at all, except for the fact that if you make things easy for people to do, they’ll do it.”

2. Consider the context

Another barrier preventing behavioural science practices from taking hold in an organisation is a concept known as ‘context dependence,’ says Soman.

“People are different from each other, but we also need to remember that people are different from themselves at different points in time. You will make decisions differently in the morning versus in the evening, or on a weekday versus a weekend.

“Therefore, we need to remember that anything we’ve done that worked well in the past worked well under certain circumstances.”

Another important contextual layer for HR to consider is someone’s status and authority within an organisation. These factors will likely change how they view a situation.

Previously, Soman conducted research demonstrating that the more senior you become in an organisation, the less empathetic you are to people.

“For example, we do studies that are based on [research into] fairness. So, you might imagine that there’s been a snowstorm overnight and your local hardware store decides to increase the price of shovels the next morning. Is that fair?

“It turns out, if you ask that question to anyone on the street, they’ll say, ‘Absolutely not.’  You ask that to a student of economics and they’ll say, ‘It’s not fair, but it’s consistent with economics – demand and supply.’ Ask that to someone who has a PhD and is teaching economics and they’ll say, ‘Yes, it makes perfect sense.’ Ask that to a CEO, and they’ll say the same thing.

“Empirically, we know that people get more and more detached from understanding human beings the higher up they go. It makes sense. The more senior you get, the more you spend time in boardrooms instead of being out there on the ground. And so the empathy gap grows.”

Hear more from Dilip and James by signing up for AHRI’s webinar on 11th May, HR for Humans: Behavioural Science at Work. This webinar is free for AHRI members.

3. Use data for good

In a separate interview with Money on the Mind, Healy poses an interesting perspective.

“We’re currently too squeamish about employers using data we put onto their systems, and not squeamish enough about tech companies using data we put onto theirs. 

“Why are we seemingly fine with our Facebook data being monetised – and weaponised – yet, as soon as we get wind of an employer using our email metadata to do sentiment analysis or organisational network analysis, we scream ‘Big Brother’?”

Speaking to HRM, Healy says, “The reason for this paradox is the distance to power. Mark Zuckerberg sits in an office in California – he’s almost like this mythical being. Whereas your boss sits in the corner office on your floor, so we don’t want them to use that data.”

To overcome this, he says employers and HR need to think about how to use data to generate tangible results – such as positive behavioural change.

“I’ve seen that Google now supposedly has a plug-in for Google Meet. It uses some kind of rate card that you create to tell you what each person’s time costs per hour. When you go and set up a meeting, it does the calculation and says, ‘This meeting will cost $2000, would you like to proceed or send an email?’

“That’s an example of using data that’s potentially sensitive to people for an obvious benefit: you’re not going to waste as many people’s time. Those are the kind of examples we should be pursuing,” says Healy.

4. Ask the right questions to understand the end goal

We tend to have preconceived notions about what people like and dislike, says Soman.

“[For example], we assume that people don’t want to wait. So we think the shorter you make things, the better. But it turns out that’s not always the case. I did a project with a large hospital that had a [check-up] process for people in remission from cancer.

“The whole process took about four hours and 30 minutes, and there were lots of people hanging around outside of the clinic. The hospital CEO walked around and said, ‘There are too many people here [waiting]. We need to do something.'”

“People are different from each other, but we also need to remember that people are different from themselves at different points in time.” – Dilip Soman, Director of Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman research centre.

Operations researchers were brought in for an eight-month long analysis project to assess how they could restructure the space and the processes to reduce the wait time.

“At the end of all that, that four hours and 30 minutes turned into three hours and 55 minutes, or something like that. 

“But it turns out that it didn’t matter, because these people took the day off work to make sure they were okay. Shaving off 20 minutes or so didn’t matter to them. Not only did they not mind waiting, they wanted to wait and talk and listen to people. They wanted to share stories and coping structures.”

So the end goal shouldn’t have been to make the wait time shorter, but more meaningful.

“A behavioural lens could have saved this hospital lots of money and time,” he says.

Putting these tips into action

If this has piqued your interest and you’d like to learn more about applying a behavioural science lens to your workplace, Soman suggests keeping the following in mind:

• Adopt a learning mindset. “You need a humility mindset and to accept that you’re not going to know what’s happening in every situation.”
• Experiment with things. This would require permission, time and space from the management level, he says.
• Do something with your insights. “Often companies learn really quickly about what employees want, but they run on a six-month planning cycle. 

“That lack of agility is often a barrier. I’ve worked with companies that have become really good at data [collection] but, when you say, ‘Can we change this?’ they’re quick to say, ‘No, it’s on a 12-month planning cycle. We will revisit in 2024.’ So, by the time you get around to doing something about it, people have changed again.”

Healy says there’s a consensus among most leaders at the moment that they need to focus on optimising their workforce for greater productivity, wellbeing and future prosperity.

“That provides an opportunity to do more in the behavioural science space,” he says. “We need to understand humans as they really are, not as the management theorists would like us to believe.

“I’m not suggesting that every HR department has to become an academic science department, but I think we need to have a bit more humility and be open to the idea that not everyone knows everything; humans are incredibly complex.

“Organisations are far too tied to the ‘This is the way we’ve always done it’ mindset. But that freedom to test and learn is really important.”