Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary In the context of a commercial lending bank in Colombia, a behaviourally-sensitive incentive scheme led to significantly positive effects on performance and worker well-being, and results suggest that incentives alone were not sufficient to help overcome prior performance and worker well-being issues. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>In this paper we test whether procrastination and planning problems affect the performance, compensation and work satisfaction among employees. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment with a bank in Colombia to change the frequency and intensity with which employees received reminders about goal achievements. We also provided small in-kind prizes every week to remind employees of their goal achievement. Loan officers in the treatment group showed strong improvements in their goal achievements, better workload distribution, and higher monthly compensation (not including the value of the small prizes). The intervention also improved worker satisfaction and reduced stress levels, without affecting the quality of the loan officers' portfolios. We show that including branch managers (the supervisors of the loan officers) in the intervention was central in achieving these results, since they played a key role in reinforcing the reminders and helping employees with planning problems.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links http://www.nber.org/papers/w16944.pdf Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question What type of incentives can be implemented in order to resolve worker procrastination problems affecting performance and cash-flow? Can these incentives also make workers better off financially, and in terms of well-being? Sample Trial population and sample selection Research was conducted with Bancamia, a Colombian bank specializing in credit to small and micro businesses, with 61 branches and 6 loan officers per branch. Branches were stratified by location, and then randomly assigned to treatment and control. Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups 31 bank branches Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description The Madrugador Program, which was built around the idea that loan officers are prone to procrastination problems regarding their workload over the month. It included a set of short term, weekly incentives to reward loan officers for completing specific placement goals during the first two weeks of the month. It focused on small, positive incentives to reward performance; challenging, but not unattainable (set at a level which had been attained pre-intervention by roughly 10% of the loan officers every month). Each loan officer had the opportunity to receive two prizes per month: goals for loans and renewals for the first two weeks of the month, and for the last two weeks of the month. Weekly reminders were given to officers about their goals and whether they were on track, and a monthly bulletin was distributed to acknowledge good performers and to keep the programme objectives salient. The experiment was conducted from November 2008 to April 2009. Beginning in February 2009, branch managers were included in the incentives scheme to that they would receive monthly awards if their branch met 50% of the set goals. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Baseline surveys (conducted by a professional survey firm over the phone in September and October 2008) provided information regarding participants' personal and socioeconomic characteristics, stress levels, job satisfaction, and work practices. Monthly and weekly financial indicators at the branch level from Bancamia's internal IT system contain data on the pre-treatment period from July to October 2008, including the variables: number of loan officers and prize winners per branch, number of loans per branch, branch characteristics, portfolio composition, delinquency rates, credit placement and loan officer compensation data. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Performance: number of loan officers in each branch achieving weekly targets, Gap Indicator (distance from ideal distribution of loan sourcing across the month). Productivity: Monthly productivity, productivity for weeks 1 & 2, productivity for weeks 3 & 4. Delinquency rates: Current delinquency rates, future delinquency rates (2 months out). Individual compensation: Salary + bonus. Well-being / Satisfaction levels / Planning / Stress levels: Reported work satisfaction levels, reported compensation satisfaction levels, reported ability to make and adhere to a plan, reported planning levels, reported percentage of time feeling stressed at work.</p> Results <p>Loan officers in the treatment branches show a significant improvement in their task allocation, as well as job satisfaction and stress levels. Achievement of goals during the first two weeks of the month improved by 30%. Sourcing of new loans increased by an average of 18%, and renewal loans by an average of 10% in the first two weeks of each month. There was a substantial positive impact on individual compensation through incentives: on average, compensation increased by 25% per month. Treatment also lead to loan officers reporting a significant increase in job satisfaction and reduction in stress levels. Overall, there was no significant change in the level of new loans per month, but a strong shift toward the ideal distribution of loan sourcing and allocation of tasks throughout the month. The shift lead to no change in credit quality. Importantly, the effects disappeared after the intervention was stopped at the end of the experiment, indicating that the effects are indeed tied to the reminders.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Cadena, X., Schoar, A., Cristea, A., & Delgado-Medrano, H. M., 2011. 'Fighting Procrastination in the Workplace: An Experiment.' NBER Working Paper Series, No. 16944, April. Citation for use in academic references
