18 September 2017 
Rob Baker, Founder Tailored Thinking
Guest blogger, Rob Baker, from Tailored Thinking, provides some ideas of how HR teams can harness “nudges” and behavioural insights to improve work experiences and deliver fairer, higher impact HR using a case study from the University of Melbourne.
Rob has over 10 years experience in Higher Education and has worked in various HR leadership roles at the University of Sheffield and the University of Melbourne.
Mental short-cuts (known as heuristics) often help us to make quick, impulsive decisions in a busy world. These efficiencies in our decision making save us time and energy but can unwittingly lead to unintended and unconscious biases in our thinking.As most of us will be all too aware, all people are fallible. HR professionals included. Our decisions, ways of working and general behaviour is often not as well thought-out and wilful as we think
In activities such as recruitment this can perpetuate race and gender inequality.
Our brains continually strive to find ways to do what is familiar and comfortable and avoid novelty and the unknown. Thinking and behaving differently therefore requires a great deal of conscious and mental effort.
In tasks which require our energy, engagement and action, this can often result in non-participation in a given activity. This often occurs even when there is a genuine intention to participate. From an HR perspective we might witness this through non-response to survey requests, non- completion of on-line training and failure to attend pre-booked workshops.
Behavioural economics is a field of science focussed on understanding our innate human foibles and the creation of applied, evidence-based, approaches to mitigate and buffer against them.
A behavioural ‘nudge’ is the term coined to describe the deliberate design of a process or activity to mitigate the pitfalls of known human biases and habits to encourage certain desired behaviours or patterns of activity.
A number of frameworks have been developed collecting together these nudges. The opportunities to apply these frameworks and behaviour insights across HR are abundant.
Following an evaluation of key behavioural research, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) provided a simple framework entitled EAST to be used by organisations who want to encourage customers or employees to adopt desired actions or behaviour. EAST is an acronym made up of 4 key principles: Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely.
Outlined below is an example of how I applied the EAST framework at the University of Melbourne to increase the booking and taking annual leave amongst academic staff. This result in an increased take-up/reporting of annual leave amongst academics in a Faculty from 60 to 90 percent.
The effort required to take action often puts people off – this is particularly the case where individuals may not be highly motivated or engaged in the first instance. Put yourself in the shoes of others and map out any steps are involved in a process or how much time commitment is involved.
Making messages clear often results in a significant increase in response rates to communications. Recognise that most people scan emails rather than read them intently and therefore the actions required need to be clearly highlighted and outlined in simple steps.
Case study from the University of Melbourne: We produced step-by-step guides attached to emails and additionally offered to speak to or meet academics individually to walk them through the annual leave system (a number of staff simply didn’t like or want to learn a new system). The emails we sent were clearly set out in simple language with bullet points and required action in bold at the top of the email.
Our attention is drawn towards message that are personalised, colourful and have images. The subject lines of emails is also critical.
People like understanding what the benefits of the action is for them or others and may be incentivised by a potential reward.
Case study from the University of Melbourne: All our emails were personalised to the academic in question and we outlined in the email how many days of annual leave they personally had to take by the end of the year. We used a provocative subject line too (see below). In terms of a reward, a research study was highlighted demonstrating the health benefits associated with taking regular annual leave.
We are social beings and most people want to adopt behaviours similar to their peers (the keeping up with the Jones effect). For example, by highlighting that most people have currently or previously taken part in a survey (e.g. showing completion rates to date) or a workshop (e.g. previous attendance records) someone may feel more motivation to engage.
Identify key influencers across the area you want to engage. Ask them to openly and publically demonstrate their commitment to the activity you are undertaking and role-model the desired behaviour (e.g. if they use twitter they could highlight that they have attended a workshop or completed a survey).
Case study from Melbourne University: In the subject line we (potentially rather cheekily) wrote – “The majority of your colleagues have booked all their annual leave – why haven’t you?” This provocative response got a good click through rate (which we monitored) and was twice as high as other general HR updates / newsletters we sent out.
In advance of the campaign we ensured that the Pro-Vice Chancellor and all Heads of Department had booked their full allocation of annual leave and in the email we highlighted this.
The same request made at different times may have drastically different levels of success. People are less likely to be motivated to respond to requests or take action when they are busy with work. For example, it is particularly important to be aware of academic work demands and flows when seeking engagement from those with teaching or marking responsibilities. With email, I have (unscientifically) tended to find a better response rate between 15:00 – 16:30 Wednesday – Thursday.
Case study from Melbourne University: We started our campaign in September (with annual leave needing to be booked by December) and sent monthly reminders to academics. Previously an anonymous system generated email would have been sent in November potentially too late for academics to make arrangements to take all their leave.
We found greatest click through rates with our emails when they were sent between 15:00 – 16:30 Tuesday – Thursday. Interestingly we now know this correlates with when people are most likely to engage with social media.
This is just a small example of how findings from behavioural economics can be applied to HR.
Other examples where research from this field could be directly applied include: completion of surveys, attendance of training sessions, supporting people to change behaviours and ways of working following change and transformation, designing reward schemes and recruitment and selection. And this list is certainly not exhaustive (or particularly creative).
To be truly impactful HR needs to think more holistically about how we support and enable an environment where people can perform at their best and engage in activities and initiatives which are significant to the organisation.
Potentially, some of the best ways HR can have impact is changing the design of our approaches using behavioural insights rather than the policies we develop.
Since returning to the UK from Australia Rob has founded Tailored Thinking with a mission to make work better, and make better work, through the application of behavioural science and positive psychology.
Author: Rob Baker, Founder and Director of Tailored Thinking
