The Science of Nudges
Cal is a final year student, completing their final research paper in behavioral psychology. The paper is due in 3–4 weeks. While Cal has completed their field work and research they now need to convert the same into a 1500 words paper. In order to ensure, they are on track and consistently putting in the effort, Cal has requested their friend to send them a reminder email every week till their submission date, detailing their tasks for the week. This helps Cal, set out their weekly targets and achieve them.
Like Cal, we may also have been in situations where we required some external reminders or just a push to complete tasks, reach targets or meet deadlines. What we are actually doing by asking friends, family, colleagues, peers to consistently remind us about certain tasks or goals is also called as nudging.
What is a nudge?
A nudge is nothing but a subtle intervention that helps an individual make better decisions. In fact, the UK government established a nudge unit and famously used behavioral science to encourage citizens to pay their taxes on time and to vote, as well as to address public-health issues.
“A nudge, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not.” (Thaler & Sunstein 2008)
Since the 1950s, behavioral scientists, have studied human irrationality and devised ways to improve influence how employees react in the workplace.
Why do workplaces need nudges?
In a 2019 article McKinsey & Co revealed that over the past two decades, companies have used the insights of behavioral science to reduce bias in boardrooms, improve strategic decision making, provide benefits for customers, enhance the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and avoid making bad bets on major acquisitions or investments.
Here’s some examples:
A steel plant that put up posters of watching eyes to remind its employees where safety procedures were critical, saw a 35% increase in employees following safety procedures.
An organization that focused on on a newcomers potential and opportunities while on-boarding them rather than the organizations’ own PR saw a 33% increase in employee loyalty to the employer.
(Source: Lessons from corporate nudging, McKinsey & Co, 2019)
Have you met Conduct’s Inclusion Dimsums?
At Conduct, we believe that the journey of a team to becoming inclusive and diverse is not a sprint but a marathon. Ensuring that all team members have access to the world of diversity and inclusion led us to creating our very own nudge system called Inclusion Dimsums.
Inclusion Dimsums are a weekly bites of information that allows our users and their teams to get acquainted with the diverse world of appropriate workplace behavior, understanding their colleagues, workplace boundaries and so much more. Like a runner would take regular breaks for water during a marathon, our Inclusion Dimsums allow users to sit back and learn something new about building better workplaces every week.
Inclusion Dimsums ensure that the onus of building a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace does not fall on an employer alone. It allows every member to learn get involved in better workplace behavior. Would you like to try our Inclusion Dimsums?
If you would like to know more, please visit our website https://getconduct.in/
Schedule a demo by booking a slot on here : Schedule Demo
Got any suggestions or feedback? Write to us at hello@getconduct.in
