Industrial Behavior Modification

I really do love the job I have here in my restaurant on the beach. Working independently is great because I have complete freedom scheduling when and how much I will work. Even though I work under such great conditions, I still need external motivation to help me keep going. I love it when my customers compliment me or my establishment, whether it’s a direct comment, a conversation I overhear, or even something as small as a tip. This all encourages me to do more and more of what I do, and do well.

Looking at reinforcers led me to look at how they affect people with jobs similar and completely different than mine. As it turns reinforcement research in the workplace has been practiced since the 1970’s (Nelson, Raj, Rao 2).

Business owners are interested in the worker performance as its correlation connects directly with company profit. In the 1970’s the behavior case studies that dealt with workers analyzed those that did simpler work (a category I, myself, would have been put in). Specific studies observed construction workers, bank tellers, textile workers, retailers, store clerks, and mining workers. In each study the employees’ work performance was aided by reinforcement, though it manifested itself differently for each case (Nelson, Raj, Rao 2-3).

A research experiment documented in “A Study on the Effects of Some Reinforcers to Improve Performance of Employees in a Retail Industry” studies reinforcement’s effects on workers that do simple tasks and those that occupy more complex ones.

So far I have generalized all reinforcers. The most pertinent reinforcements (to this study) include monetary rewards, positive feedback, informal dress code, and flexible work hours. The article’s authors make it clear that certain kinds of reinforcement will increase performance differently for people with different jobs. Specifically, employees that work harder, more complex jobs receive more benefit from feedback (Nelson, Raj, Rao 3).

What, you might ask, qualifies a job as complex? The famous behaviorist Albert Bandura describes them as jobs that “[require] knowledge, cognitive ability, memory capacity, behavioral facility, information processing, persistence, and effort” (Nelson, Raj, Rao 3). In the social sciences operationalized definitions are given for variables, so the study defined “complex job” with Bandura’s description.

The first group the experiment focused on was the employees with more complex jobs, such as writing program code or teaching software packages to others. This group is referred to as G1. The first subgroup, G11, was given the reinforcement of either money or paid leave. The second subgroup, G12, was instead, given feedback. Feedback is positively geared work ethic evaluation, where a manager might would compliment a worker for a job well done or provide a worker with useful information concerning how to improve.

The second broad worker group, G2, consisted of employees doing simpler tasks like data entry and system maintenance. Subgroup G21 was given a more casual dress code and G22 received more flexible work hours.

As according to social scientific methodology each group’s participants were chosen randomly from the same population. G1’s working habits were observed before the first “intervention” of reinforcers then recorded again after the intervention’s administration. Final work productivity data was then collected about one month later at a time called “postinvervention.” G2’s experimentation differed slightly. There was data recorded before and at the time of the first intervention, but there was also a second intervention added for observing the diminishing ability that the reinforcers had to moderate work ethic. At each phase during this experiment observers and clients rated workers on a scale that represented the employee’s quality of work. The scale concerns a rate of how many times various productive traits were observable at each observation period (ie: 800 frequencies of behavior for a certain day) (Nelson, Raj, Rao 10-12).

It is conclusive that each group showed a tremendous productivity increase during the initial reinforcement interventions.

Subgroup G11, the group that was given financial incentive, showed an increase in mean aggregate behavior from 648.33 to 809.96. Subgroup G12, the one receiving feedback, increased its behavior from 647.5 to 832.72. An early conclusion we can make here is that feedback was slightly more effective at increasing advantageous work behaviors in employees than monetary incentive was. The postintervention period was the most interesting and revealing of all the data collected. It showed the G11 group showed an extremely sharp decrease in behaviors whereas the G12 group maintained its heightened work ethic a month later at this postintervention period. Strajkovic and Luthans were correct saying that workers exacting more mentally involved work will respond better to feedback (Nelson, Raj, Rao 11).

Subgroups G21 and G22 held more similar results than the G1 group did. G2 overall had a smaller overall increase upon the first intervention. G21 went up to 334.39 behaviors observed from 311.67. However, upon the second intervention the beneficial effects of the reinforcements were only about half of what the original intervention accomplished (Nelson, Raj, Rao 13).

There aren’t concrete stereotypes for the type of people working each kind of job, this data only reflects motivation potential for a certain job. It is important to see here how much encouragement (no matter what form it takes) affects people’s motivation. My favorite result and finding is that money doesn’t win. As it turns out, people benefit more in the workplace by the kind words of superiors rather than just a bit of extra cash. Though this study observed work behavior, I believe the findings can be a useful tool for showing universally that people function better under good social environments and that encouragement (reinforcement) can drastically help people in most circumstances.

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Nelson, John; Raj, John; Rao, K.S.P. “A Study on the Effects of Some Reinforcers to Improve Performance of Employees in a Retail Industry.” SAGE Publications. 6 November 2006. 20 February 2007. (http://bmo.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/30/6/848).