Once the functional analysis is complete, the manager is ready to develop and implement an intervention strategy to strengthen desirable performance behaviors and weaken undesirable behaviors. The appropriate strategy will entail changing some element of the performance-reward linkage structure, processes, technology, group, or the task with the goal of making high-level performance more rewarding. In the Emery example, the work technology was altered to require the keeping of a checklist. The checklist plus the computation, as the end of the day, of a container utilization rate acted to reinforce the desirable behavior of using containers.
The final step in OB Mod is to evaluate performance improvement. In the Emery intervention, the immediate improvement in the container utilization rate demonstrated that behavioral change took place. That it rose to ninety percent and held at that level further indicates that learning took place. That is, the employees underwent a relatively permanent change in behavior.
Linking OB Mode and Reinforcement Theory
Reinforcement theory relies on positive reinforcement, shaping and recognizing the impact of different schedules of reinforcement on behavior. OB Mod uses these concepts to provide with a powerful and proven means for changing employee behavior.
OB Mod in Practice
OB Mod has used by a number of organization to improve employee productivity and to reduce errors, absenteeism, tardiness, and accident rates. Organizations like General Electric, Weyerhaeuser, the city of Detroit, Dayton-Hudson Stores, and Xerox report impressive results using OB Mod. For instance, in 1987, frustrated by customer complaints, Xerox’s top management changed the basis for its executive bonus plan traditional quotas to long-term customer satisfaction. The company surveys forty thousand customers world-wide every month to determine the percentage who are satisfied with Xerox products and service. At the start of each year, top management looks at the previous year’s results and develops a goal. In 1990, the target was ninety percent satisfaction, up from eighty-six percent at the start of 1989. By 1992, Xerox aimed to hit one hundred percent.
Seattle Pacific Supply Co., an apartment supply firm with only eleven employees, has used OB Mod to significantly improve employee performance. Every day that the company books $5500 in sales, all employees receive an extra half-hour’s pay. If daily sales hit $15,000, everyone gets another six hours’ wages. The previous year’s sale provides the basis for Pacific’s bonus targets. Paid out once a month, the bonuses accrue daily and in a typical month amount to an extra twenty hours’ salary for each employee. Since 1986, when Pacific scrapped its monthly incentive program in favor of this daily performance appraisal, company sales have increased more than fifty percent, turnover has dropped to almost zero, and daily sales targets have been hit four out of five days a week.
OB Mod has also proven effective in sports organizations. Researchers, for instance, helped a Midwestern university hockey team win more games by significantly increasing the number legal body blocks or hits by team members. These legal hits are crucial for winning collegiate games because they give the offense more total time with the puck, more shots on goal, and usually, more goals. Over a two-year period, using OB Mod techniques, the team’s mean hit rate increased 1411 percent and its win-loss-tie record went from 13-21-2 to 23-15-2.
The philosophy behind OB Mod additionally appears to be affecting many managers in the way they relate to their employees in the kind and quantity of feedback they give, the content of performance appraisals, and the type and allocation of organizational rewards.
Despite the positive results that OB Mod has demonstrated, it is not without its critics. Is it a technique for manipulating people? Does it decrease an employee’s freedom? If so, is such action on the part of managers unethical? And do nonmonetary reinforces like feedback, praise, and recognition get stale after a while? Will employees begin to see these as ways for management to increase productivity without providing commensurate increases in their pay? There are no easy answers to questions such as these.