Four ways to change employee behaviour

WHEN it comes to changing people's behaviour, there is no shortage of things for managers to try. They can give suggestions, they can offer cash bonuses, they can yell. They can assign coaches, implement 360-degree feedback, or take employees on outdoor team-building excursions. They put up inspirational posters, set stretch targets, and create Individual Development Plans.

All of these things are part of the manager's "toolkit", and all of them can be effective in helping to change the way employees behave. What managers generally lack, however, is an understanding of the mechanism of behaviour change underpinning these different techniques. Without this perspective on how and why these interventions work to produce change, it's difficult to know which to use, how to evaluate their effectiveness, and when to try something different.

In our newly published book, Changing Employee Behavior: A Practical Guide for Managers, we examine four of the most prominent psychological models to emerge over the past 100 years to explain how behaviour change works: behaviourism, cognitive psychology, systemic psychotherapy, and behavioural economics. While most of the book is concerned with specific techniques for changing behaviour and how to apply them effectively, the approaches are grounded in these views of how change happens.