The Hawthorne Effect

Written before about employee turnover (and ideally reducing it), and now we’re going to add a new wrinkle to this whole deal: the Hawthorne Effect. What’s that, you ask? Good question. Per Wikipedia, the Hawthorne Effect is “when individuals modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to being observed.” This all comes from a place called Hawthorne Works (get it?) in Cicero, Illinois and some experiments done with light bulbs. If you make the room more bright — increase the light bulb, in other words — workers end up being more productive. But if you dim the light bulb again, productivity drops back to normal (or below-normal levels). The whole deal with the Hawthorne Effect, then, is that if you’re more responsive to worker needs, maybe those workers will be more productive.

I explained this whole thing to my wife this morning en route to the dog park. She said, and I mostly quote this correctly, “Isn’t that just basic human nature? Or human decency?” Indeed, it is. Unfortunately, a lot of managers are unaware of how to do this. Remember: we live in a world where 68 percent of managers aren’t engaged in the career development of their employees. Only 1 in 3 managers can name the strengths of their employees. 60 percent of managers claim they “don’t have the time” to respect their employees. This is all real stuff, and people live through it every day. If you doubt my veracity on this, check…