Posted by Kathi Enderes on November 12, 2018.
“Science confirms: people are not pets,” claims a recent article.1 The key finding of this piece was also the topic of the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink,2 which asserts that people cannot bribe others into doing what they want. Study after study has confirmed that attempts to motivate people with extrinsic rewards to perform better, work harder, or behave differently tend to be fruitless at best—and are often counterproductive. So why do so many organizations still use the old “pay for performance” moniker? Why do they spend hours and hours designing systems to evaluate performance and differentiate performance levels with rewards?
