Don’t follow the leaderboard

Which of the following tasks is most likely to benefit from performance-contingent pay and close monitoring?

Processing documents using the department’s existing system and long-established processes

Generating ideas for how to improve the department’s processing efficiency

Mentoring a new, junior colleague on how to process documents according to the team’s established processes

Designing a new marketing strategy for the organisation

A finance director called Wenjing wants to improve both the quality and quantity of her team’s output. Based on the evidence, what is the best overall approach?

Avoid at all costs introducing any form of real-time performance dashboard for tracking their activity

Increase performance-contingent pay across all roles

Reduce the number of targets and let employees have more autonomy in their work

Use metrics selectively for volume tasks while having conversations with employees to encourage creative, collaborative work

Which of the following is the best explanation as to why real-time electronic performance monitoring may reduce collaboration even when leaders do not intend for this to happen?

The existence of individual metrics often make employees feel that helping others comes at a personal cost

Leaders who favour monitoring also tend to be the kind of individuals who focus on the achievement of easily quantified tasks as opposed to forms of performance that are less easily quantified

Employees become so focused on their own performance metrics that they become too busy to socialise

All of the other answers are correct

A supervisor called Padma holds weekly one-to-one meetings with her reports focused mainly on reports’ progress against their targets. Which of the following important behaviours is most likely to be neglected?

Ensuring compliance with the organisation’s overall business objectives

Performance management

Building a sense of genuine social connection with the individual

Workload planning to ensure that busy periods do not affect the team’s performance

A leader called Ilya gives a high-performing employee called Mary a new project. Ilya specifies how every stage of the project must be completed. What is the greatest risk of adopting this approach?

The increased monitoring makes it more likely that Mary will deliver the project late

Mary may feel that her sense of autonomy has been eroded, which may undermine her engagement

Two of the other answers are correct

Mary has no incentive to perform other tasks that are not related to this project

Belongingness at work is best improved by which of the following?

Introducing strict rules on the number of days that employees must spend together physically in the workplace

Having a greater number of social events outside of working hours that employees must attend

Explaining that belongingness can increase employee wellbeing and then encouraging employees to form friendships in the workplace

Having a leader show genuine interest in the pressures, hopes and aspirations of individual employees.

A year after implementing a real-time dashboard and more AI-driven performance analytics, a human resources director notices that high-performing employees were statistically more likely than average performers to leave the organisation. Which of the following is the most likely reason?

High-performing employees have already reached a ceiling in terms of their job performance so tend to benefit less from the implementation of real-time dashboards and more AI-based analytics

High performers tend to be more outspoken, which means they are more likely to clash with senior management

High performers are more likely to be intrinsically motivated – and increased monitoring may have affected high performers more than less self-driven employees

High performers have the strongest skills so naturally receive more job offers

A marketing director called Colin introduces a dashboard to track the number of client proposals that each marketing professional submits per month. After five months, he notices that proposal numbers have increased. However, the quality of creative work has declined slightly. What is the most likely explanation?

The team has likely become overwhelmed by client demands

The team’s motivation may be low because they likely would have preferred a dashboard that measured the number of ideas that they submitted

The dashboard has shifted the team’s focus towards quantity, which has inadvertently disincentivised team members from doing quality work

The team needs additional training in order to lift the quality of their work

A regional sales manager called Veronika wants to motivate a struggling team member called Jeff. Jeff’s performance has fallen in the last few months. Veronika is considering adding Jeff to a weekly, public sales leaderboard for extra accountability. What does the evidence suggest?

Leaderboards work well for struggling performers but not for high performers who already have high levels of intrinsic motivation.

Public comparison is likely to increase stress – and may not reliably improve Jeff’s overall performance

Two of the other answers are correct

The approach will work if Veronika also provides larger financial incentives when Jeff achieves his weekly targets

In a larger multinational organisation, the country manager for France argues that introducing real-time dashboards will make employees in France more accountable and productive. Based on the evidence, which of the following is the most likely outcome?

Overall productivity may not be reliably improved

Dashboards are likely to boost productivity in introverted employees as they greatly fear having their performance shared with their colleagues

Dashboards typically improve productivity when employees are low on intrinsic motivation

Dashboards usually improve productivity in data-driven environments