The Hawthorne Effect and the Power of Implicit Communication

Summary:
The Hawthorne Effect helps us understand the power of implicit communication.

The Case:
Time off is a good incentive, we're told. And, here's an example: Inc. magazine (August 1999) reported on a firm that tried time off, instead of the usual incentives, to increase productivity. Senior management took the action after a survey showed employees ranked time off, to spend with their families, as a top priority.

The program began with generous time-off incentives for the sales force. The salespeople responded by breaking every sales record in the company's history. Then management expanded the incentive to all employees, and profits zoomed as well.

From a communication perspective, this case has several interesting facets. Let's look at one of them now: The power of implicit communication

First, this action communicated to employees, and communicated in a very powerful way. Yes, there would have been explicit communication as well, specifying the targets and reward, but there's more here than just explicit messages.

By way of explanation, consider the Hawthorne experiments, which took place at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works between 1927 and 1932. In these now famous experiments, researchers tried to find out how changes in lighting would affect productivity. As expected, productivity went up when they increased the intensity of the lighting. Unexpectedly, it also went up when the intensity decreased, even to the point where the people being studied could hardly see.

Needless to say, this turn of events confounded the researchers, who then studied what happened. Most importantly, they learned that behavior can be affected by overtly observing it. In other words, when someone knows you're observing their behavior, they behave differently (seems obvious, but that's not always the case).

The Hawthorne Effect
We now call this the Hawthorne Effect. Someone else has called it the "Somebody Upstairs Cares" syndrome, which may describe what's happening in this case. And although the results of the Hawthorne experiments have been challenged, the principle still makes sense to most of us.

The Implicit Message
That principle, in the case of time off as an incentive, also seems to make sense here. Management sends a message that says, in effect, "We understand you have a life beyond the workplace and we respect that. We don't demand that all your time and energy go into your job; instead we're prepared to seek a fair exchange of benefits. Generate good results for the company and we'll give you more time with your family." Employees interpret the message this way, "If senior management thinks I'm important and my priorities are important, then I'll work harder for them."

Applying the Ideas in this Article:
In designing incentive programs, step back from the project, far enough back to see the implicit messages you'll be sending. And, sometimes, the fact that you're doing something is just as powerful as what you do. It's an important lesson to take from the Hawthorne Effect.