BIC Advisory

How to Improve Compliance with Hugs, Nudges, Smacks and Shoves

One of the biggest frustrations of compliance professionals is how to get people to do the right thing. Doing the right thing entails ensuring employees follow company policies and procedures. To achieve this , a “Tell and Sell” approach is usually adopted by communicating policy requirements to employees hoping that having the knowledge will influence their behavior to do the right thing . Unfortunately most employees do not buy into what you tell them and go ahead to breach the company’s policies. Now , you are left scratching your head on what to do next and you decide to wield the big stick of ” Consequence Management” through disciplinary action. This often gets the job done but leaves a bad taste in the mouth because this breeds a culture of fear which stifles innovation.

A more balanced approach that utilizes a range of  measures to change behaviour is the exchange matrix developed by Jeff French, a social marketing expert .The exchange matrix is a conceptual device to represent four different forms of exchange that can be designed to promote changes in individuals and groups.

An example of how this is used in promoting 100% completion of compliance training within a defined deadline is described below:

Hug

This technique is characterized by active rewarding .You incentivize employees by stating that the first 10 employees to complete the training will win prizes.

Nudge

Nudging is based on the idea of changing behaviour without using compulsion. You communicate the status of completion per department ( x%) to all employees with the aim that departments with low completion rates will be motivated to improve their completion rates

Shove

Shoving is a passive and negative exchange (punishing a person passively).You embed compliance training completion metrics as one of the measures for evaluating employee performance.

Smack

This involves the elimination of choice i.e you must do it by force. You take disciplinary action against defaulters that fail to complete the training on time e.g. by logging them off /unable to access their computers.

In conclusion, for compliance professionals to deter wrongdoing they will need to use a combination of tools that seek to influence behaviour by focusing on how people make choices and then design ways to influence their decisions.

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