If you’ve never worked out in your life and set a New Year’s resolution to exercise every day at 5 a.m, you might make it to mid-January. It takes time to build better habit. It’s incredibly easy to fail, even when we’re motivated to keep going. So why do we have such higher standards when it comes to someone else changing their behavior, especially in the workplace? When a superior requests or directs us to switch up an established way of working, who among us wouldn’t struggle to adopt the new routine? Behavioral science can help.
The principle of psychological reactance explains why it’s so hard to make people change their ways. We resist when we feel forced to do something (think about return to officemandates). Let’s say you want to encourage a shy employee to speak more up in meetings. If you pressure or penalize them, they’ll likely pull back even further.
A stickier way to build this habit? Offer encouraging words when they do speak up—and help them understand the value their perspective brings. Then, let them work towards the behavior themselves while offering positive reinforcements. Do this consistently and sincerely whenever the employee asserts their opinion. Be careful not to slip into the role of one-time cheerleader or hands-off coach. Behavioral change is built with time, and giving encouraging feedback only once will have a limited effect.
Workplaces have used this flavor of applied behavioral science called “nudge theory” for the last two decades to back large-scale change management initiatives, like improving pension plan enrollment. But because it maintains employee agency, can be implemented at a low cost, and relies on minimal intervention, nudge theory also applies particularly well to workplace habit development.
To help employees build better habits they’re motivated to keep, coach them with these three nudge theory principles in mind.
Tap into the employee’s intrinsic motivation
Instead of pushing a pre-set professional development agenda on employees, ask them to identify what positive habits they want to build. Aligning with their own interests taps into their sense of intrinsic motivation—the drive to engage in an activity because they find it personally rewarding.
Employees inherently want to do good work. They want better relationships with their coworkers, deeper job satisfaction, and clear career progression. Maybe their priority items don’t overlap with the changes you’d like to see from them. Do you force them to build habits they don’t already want to, knowing they’re not motivated to keep them up? Or would you rather cultivate lasting behavioral change, and put your efforts towards steering employees in the direction they want?
Let’s return to the employee who wants to build the confidence to participate more during team meetings. Emailing them weekly reminders to speak up doesn’t act as a nudge. It might encourage them temporarily, but only to avoid further reproach. A more effective way to build this habit may involve sending the meeting agenda in advance, which gives the employee time to prepare their opinion. The employee already wants to work on their public speaking abilities. The nudge just makes it easier for them to take actions that align with that goal.
Pace and simplify your recommendations
You send an employee to an intensive professional development workshop. They return recharged and ready to incorporate everything they learned . . . and for about six months, or until they get busy and revert to old habits.
Receiving a high amount of stimuli all at once outside of our normal environments doesn’t allow new behaviors to become habits. Take the slow, controlled, and non-invasive approach to inspire lasting behavioral change.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, behavioral economists who popularized contemporary nudge theory, offer a clever matrix for designing effective behavioral interventions. Influencing positive change should be a FEAST: Fun, Easy, Attractively designed, Socially connected, and Timely.
- Fun: Make activities enjoyable to increase the likelihood that employees will participate.
- Easy: Simplify the recommended actions so employees can easily incorporate them into their routines.
- Attractively designed: Use engaging visuals to capture attention and make the nudge inviting.
- Socially connected: Encourage social interaction around the nudge to create a sense of community and support.
- Timely: Deliver nudges within an employee’s flow of work to ensure they’re seen and acted upon. This may include communication or productivity platforms like email, Microsoft Teams, or Slack for desk workers, or tablets for deskless workers.
Instead of eventually abandoned (and expensive) interventions like traditional training, a weekly nudge might suggest a 10 to 15 minute action—delivered within an employee’s usual day-to-day work—that helps them build a single habit over a few months.
Put the power of action in their hands
Respecting an employee’s autonomy is the last and most important behavioral science principle that helps drive lasting habit development. In analyzing the efficacy of behavioral-based nudges delivered to managers and employees, my team has found that recipients are more likely to engage with nudged recommendations when they choose what behavior to work on. Giving employees ownership over their goals and approach decreases the chance they’ll start to feel pressured and resist guidance.
Emphasize the optionality of your recommendations. Employees should have the freedom to decide whether a particular suggestion will work for them. Using language like “consider trying this” or “you may want to explore this” keeps the initiation of action in the employee’s hands.
To see long-term behavioral changes in your employees, offer light, optional prompts that evolve habits over time. Remember these three principles: align with their best interests, make recommended actions easy and noninvasive, and give them final agency. Forcing employees to act in ways they wouldn’t naturally will burn them out quickly—just like that 5 a.m. daily exercise resolution.