Naming an “employee of the month” may backfire on your business. New research from an Olin PhD alumnus and Lamar Pierce, associate professor of organization & strategy, finds that programs intended to motivate employees with non-financial awards can actually end up costing firms in terms of lost productivity.
Timothy Gubler, who earned his PhD at Olin, is an assistant professor of management at the University of California, Riverside, School of Business Administration (UCR), and the lead author on the study that was recently accepted for publication in the journal Organization Science, “Motivational Spillovers from Awards: Crowding Out in a Multitasking Environment.” According to a news release from UCR:
“This is the first academic study to show that seemingly innocuous non-financial award programs can be costly to firms, primarily because they can upset the status quo and influence perceptions of equity and fairness. This can lead to internally motivated employees becoming disenfranchised.”
Ian Larkin from the University of California, Los Angeles, is a co-author on the study.
Image: by Ron Klein. Tim Gubler and Lamar Pierce in OlinBusiness Magazine 2015.
