Increasing Influence Leverage within Reward and Recognition Programs

Traditionally, recognition and reward programs relied almost exclusively on the value and positioning of the "award” when trying to influence behavior. However, social psychology and behavioral science give us new tools to increase the effectiveness of our recognition programs. This webinar will outline various techniques based on the psychology of influence and an understanding of decision biases, which when used in conjunction with standard recognition program design practices will increase the impact and effectiveness of the program.

Attendee Outcomes

By understanding the decision biases contained in everyone, attendees will be more able to leverage these biases in their favor when designing the program structure and the communications strategy needed to inform and communicate with their audience. This session will address "fixed action patterns” and discuss the various techniques of influence such as: Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof and Consensus, Liking, Authority and Scarcity. The discussion will highlight and outline various decision making "biases” that affect how people decide such as:

• Base rate fallacy – ignoring available statistical data in favor of specifics.
• Confirmation bias – the tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
• Contrast effect – the increase (or decrease) in value of something when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.
• Negativity bias – phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative than positive experiences.
• Status quo bias – the tendency for people to like things to stay relatively the same.

After discussing each of these techniques examples of how they are used within a program will be presented.

Speaker: Paul Hebert, Vice President, Symbolist

Paul Hebert is Vice President Solution Design for Symbolist, a consultancy and fulfillment organization that creates "human” programs that connect employees and other audiences to the sponsor organization at an emotional level. In short, Symbolist makes your workplace a better place to be.

Over the course of 20 years, Paul has worked closely with clients to design their influence, marketing, motivation, incentive, recognition and reward programs to increase effectiveness and reduce costs. Paul’s mission is to humanize the business relationships needed to drive greater employee, channel and customer loyalty. He is dedicated to creating true emotional connections often overlooked in our automated, tech-enabled world. Through the use of proven motivational theory, behavioral economics and social psychology he has driven extraordinary company performance.

Paul is widely considered an expert on motivation and incentives and has been interviewed by the BBC, quoted in USATODAY, published in Loyalty360 magazine, published whitepapers and articles for HRM Magazine, is a contributing author on the Fistful of Talent blog and is the Social Media Editor for the Enterprise Engagement Alliance.