In the kitchen of the brainmove office in Ghent, there is a dishwasher provided. A handy appliance that can wash all the used mugs and glasses at the end of the workday. However, for some team members, it is quite a difficult task to spontaneously and independently load the dishwasher. The process is simple: you open the door, place your coffee mug or plate inside, and close it again. At the end of the day, you add the detergent to the drawer and press the button. Strangely, some colleagues refuse to use this machine altogether. In the best case, they just leave their dirty dishes on the counter above the dishwasher, perhaps waiting for a divine intervention.
This situation is probably not unfamiliar to you. Many organizations struggle with this kind of unwanted behaviour from their employees. Often, employees do not see keeping the office tidy as their responsibility, or they simply do not pay attention to it. The problem is broader than just spontaneous tidying up. Loud conversations in open environments, taking the elevator instead of the stairs, printing emails, leaving confidential notes on the whiteboard, moving office furniture—these are all examples of unwanted behaviour that we would rather be rid of for various reasons. But how do we address this? How can we change this behaviour without resorting to becoming the “bad cop”?
We can apply traditional behavioural psychology to this problem. In this case, we work according to three principles: the carrot, the stick, and the sermon. Anyone with experience with teenage children will be familiar with these methods and will have realized that in many cases, the classical approach is ineffective. Let us briefly review them: The carrot symbolizes the offering of a reward. For example, the company might offer employees a €25 book voucher for the colleague who prints the least in a month. This is an option, but it has a financial impact on the employer. After all, we already pay our employees a salary, and we would expect that respecting basic agreements is part of that. So let us try the stick. We impose a penalty on the colleague who does not demonstrate the desired behaviour: “Mr. Janssens, please come to my office. I have noticed that you consistently hang your coat on your chair instead of in the coat room. Please stay longer on Friday and clean the archives as a punishment.” A bit radical, don’t you think? And then there is the third technique, the sermon. A psychological technique we, as parents and managers, know very well: “Matteo, when are you finally going to clean your room? It is driving me crazy!” Or “Please, when you leave the office, close all the windows and set the alarm. I beg you on my knees!”
The above methods can have an effect, but they are certainly not guaranteed to succeed and often do not align with the desired company culture. What we need is a much more elegant and less invasive methodology. The solution lies in applying subtle psychological techniques that have been studied for many years in the field of behavioural economics and that are frequently applied in marketing and government communication. These techniques are commonly referred to as “nudging.” A “nudge” is a subtle mental push in the desired direction with the aim of influencing behaviour. The term comes from the gentle push that a large elephant gives to a baby elephant to help it move in the right direction. The difference with traditional techniques is that with nudging, we do not limit the freedom of choice of our employees. They can still choose to engage in unwanted behaviour, but we make the desired behaviour more attractive.
A great example of nudging was demonstrated in Stockholm, where a metro staircase was made extremely attractive by transforming it into a piano keyboard, complete with light effects and sound. Passersby still had the option of using the escalator, but they opted for the piano staircase far more often. Another example of a nudge is the smart placement of a fly sticker in urinals. The fly encourages users to aim more precisely, resulting in significant improvements in hygiene. This is a perfect example of how nudging can promote desired behaviour, protect the health of users, and simultaneously reduce the workload of cleaning staff.
Nudges are based on what are known as heuristics. Heuristics can be described as mental shortcuts. They have evolved in our brains to allow us to take action quickly in a given situation without overthinking. Through our experiences, we have developed handy mental solutions that allow us to make decisions without much thought. As thinking humans, we often make automatic decisions without even realizing it. A great heuristic, often applied in marketing, is the system of “anchoring.” A retailer who displays a beautiful pair of shoes for €300, crosses it out, and puts €150 in red next to it is applying this principle. The unaware customer sees €300 as the reference value for the shoes, creating the perception that the shoes at €150 are a real bargain—too good to pass up! You can imagine that systematically using heuristics to influence customers can raise ethical questions.
The power of heuristics is wonderfully illustrated in the brilliant book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. In this book, Kahneman defines two mental systems that guide our behaviour. The first system works quickly, uses little energy, and allows us to make decisions based on just a few impulses. The second system is rational, works more slowly, and leads to thoughtful decisions. Kahneman demonstrated that we often rely on the first system, making nearly 90% of our decisions unconsciously. Later research has nuanced this claim, but it is clear that we can influence behaviour by triggering these unconscious decisions and guiding the actions of our users and customers. Kahneman was the first psychologist ever to win the Nobel Prize for his research and is one of the founders of behavioural economics.
A typical “nudge” makes the desired behaviour so simple that the user does not have to think much about the choice they need to make. In the modern, activity-based office environment, which offers a variety of workspaces, this is a very important principle. We want users to consciously choose the workspace that best fits their activities. However, it often turns out that the concept does not work well because not enough thought has been given to the heuristics that drive behaviour in the workspace. For example, never place a quiet space on a different floor. The effort to move to find a quiet spot is far too great, and users who prefer a very quiet environment will simply skip the effort. The result is quiet rooms that are barely used and inevitable complaints about concentration problems in open workspaces.
Scientific research has shown that the success of an activity-based workspace depends, in part, on the variety of workspace types. In other words, we need to provide spaces that can be used for any type of activity. However, we often have the tendency to make our concepts overly complicated. When our users have to make an extra mental effort to understand the difference between a brainstorming space, a meeting room, a project room, or a scrum room, they are likely to walk into the first available space and use it for any activity. The intended use of each workspace should be so clear that users use them correctly without thinking. The availability heuristic teaches us that the proximity of these spaces is crucial for their spontaneous use. Again: the easier the choice, the greater the success.
A common complaint in open office environments is poor acoustics. Users are constantly disturbed by colleagues who are having video calls or loudly discussing weekend plans in the open space. Yet, the solution is simple. We move the noise to small, acoustically enclosed spaces. Nudging principles teach us that these spaces must be very attractive—in terms of both decor and technical equipment—so that users don’t hesitate to move their conversations there. A recurring complaint is that new workspace types are used at the launch of a concept, but people quickly revert to old habits due to decision fatigue. We stop moving, leave our belongings behind, and do all our activities at the same individual workspace. Systematically reinforcing the agreements is necessary to continue encouraging the desired behaviour. We can also engage our colleagues in a story and entice them to test new workspaces. In this case, we use gamification as a “nudge.” We turn trying out the new environment into a game where users are given tasks!
We can also flip the system and make undesirable behaviour as difficult as possible. Think of airports where you have to walk miles to find a smoking area. A practical application of the so-called “default nudge” is offering smaller, healthier portions in the company cafeteria. In this example, users must make an active effort to order a larger or meat-heavy portion. The default portion is healthy, and the effort required to order it is minimal.
In our organizations, the rules for desired behaviour are often unclear. What exactly is expected of me when I leave a meeting room? Can I leave my coffee mug behind, or should I bring it to the kitchen? Should I place it on a cart? What are the customs in this organization? What do my colleagues expect of me? Initially, I will look to my colleagues for guidance. Here, the “social proof” heuristic comes into play. If all users exhibit the same behaviour, I will copy that behaviour without thinking.
If a few colleagues lead by example, I am likely to help clean up the meeting room myself. I receive a social “nudge.” We often use ambassadors to help establish behaviour agreements when introducing a new workspace concept. Here, too, we cleverly apply nudging. The ambassadors become “influencers” who show their colleagues what is expected of them in the organization. This system only works when these ambassadors are on the same level as the target audience of the nudge. This is a good reason not to include managers in our ambassadors’ group.
A potential “nudge” to break behaviour patterns is giving clear feedback to users. For example, we can display a simple, friendly, and funny video at the end of each meeting to trigger cleanup. We use feedback too little to adjust behaviour. For instance, we are often frustrated by meetings that run over time. By using online meeting tools to provide feedback on elapsed meeting time, we can sensitize users and adjust meeting duration. Another interesting example is the status indicator in MS Teams, which shows when someone is unavailable for a conversation or question.
In our organizations, we make very little use of feedback to our users. However, technology is available, and we can use IoT to make the building communicate with users: “Thank you for turning off the lights!” “Thank you for washing your hands!” These are simple examples that can indeed have an impact on the functioning of our organization. If we want to manage behaviour in our workplace effectively, we need to invest in an open and transparent culture where giving and receiving feedback on user behaviour is the norm.
You are probably wondering how we finally solved the problem of loading the dishwasher at brainmove. Well, as organizational psychologists, we applied a clever technique from our nudging arsenal. We used “priming.” It is possible to subtly plant an idea in the brains of users that will influence their behaviour. For example, by having respondents read a few aggressive words, they will act more aggressively during a discussion. So, above the dishwasher in brainmove HQ, there is now a photo of the eyes of the author of this article. These commanding eyes are the first thing people see when they enter the kitchen. I am still evaluating the effect on dishwasher usage!
