Having been in the incentive industry for over forty
years, we were always under the belief that if you wanted motivate someone with
awards, you needed to give them a wide choice of options to choose from. The greater the choice, the more successful
the program, or so it went.
Now it appears that a study by Ashley Williams, assistant
Professor of Negotiations, Organizations & Markets at Harvard Business
School may have a different answer to the question of choice. She says that the answer to a simple question
of…”What would you choose between time and money to determine the best way to
design a reward program?”...says a lot about what will motivate you.
She feels the answer is critical to understanding in
general how to engage anyone in business or life…as well as how to select
rewards. She recently completed her
dissertation for a Doctorate degree in Social Psychology entitled “Exchanging
Cents for Seconds: The Happiness Benefits of Choosing Time Over Money.” Her research focuses on “understanding how people invest
their time and money to promote health, well-being and happiness.” The choice
between time and money, she asserts, helps predict how people will spend money
to maximize their own sense of well-being and in this spectrum helps determine
the right types of awards to use for incentive programs.
After studies with
thousands of thousands of people representing almost all demographic groups,
her takeaways are that…
“People
who have a general orientation in their lives focusing on time over money
generally experience greater happiness, greater social connections and greater
meaning in life.”
Knowing whether people value time or money will help determine how they respond to your organization’s offers to them in terms of incentives, recognition, rewards, and promotions or, for employees, scheduling changes, career advancement or more.”
Knowing whether people value time or money will help determine how they respond to your organization’s offers to them in terms of incentives, recognition, rewards, and promotions or, for employees, scheduling changes, career advancement or more.”
According to Whillans companies
should limit choice of awards because people will make suboptimal choices, and
the program will not have the impact for which it was designed. While we can
certainly understand why you would want to know if an employee valued time over
money we look forward to more conclusive evidence that less choice within the
two main alternatives has the negative impact mentioned.
For
more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white
papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net
