So it's been a while since the last post. Looking for a job is a lot of work...

Motivation theory and rewards have been coming up a lot in just about all of my classes. Psychology and design are becoming more and more intertwined as is evidenced by the rising popularity of persuasive design. Anyway, I wrote this piece a while back and wanted to share it.

David McGaw, a consultant at Embarcadero Partners, wrote that there are “Six G’s of rewards: Gold, Guts, Glory, Good, Group, Growth.” Each G represents a type of reward that can be thought of as an incentive. Gold represents monetary rewards; Guts is the reward for working on a difficult problem; Glory is private and public recognition for having completed a project; Good is the reward that one feels for altruistic work; Group is the feeling for having contributed to a collective effort; and Growth is the reward for having learned new skills or ideas.

One of the most interesting rewards is “Glory.” Glory is not a monetary award but its implications can be among the most significant. Many companies term these awards “worthless”; however, they can be effective tools for recognizing people quickly after job is done. This is especially important considering that people are happier to take a small reward in the short term rather than a larger reward in the future (this is an economic observation called hyperbolic discounting).

Colgate-Palmolive’s Global R&D group initiated a recognition economy by distributing symbolic wooden nickels to colleagues who had made noteworthy contributions to their projects. People then pass the wooden nickels on to others when they feel somebody is deserving. These little tokens of recognition (i.e., rewards in the form of glory) are often passed out in meetings, but it is not uncommon for an employee to come to work and find a few nickels anonymously placed at their desks. This informal recognition encourages a collective spirit and helps promote the free flow of ideas.

Airbnb has a similar program in place on their internal social network. For recognition of a job well done, employees can send others “appreciations.” The appreciations appear on every public monitor around the office so that all employees can see. Airbnb is so dedicated to this program that it even has a current job opening for a “Recognition Program Coordinator."