Sharing how team members are helping each other can keep co-operation alive

The common practice of ranking employees against one another comes with a downside: people may be less inclined to co-operate with co-workers for fear of losing ground themselves.

Managers must pay attention to the potentially disruptive effects of performance rankings

The common practice of ranking employees against one another comes with a downside: people may be less inclined to co-operate with co-workers for fear of losing ground themselves.

Think of a sales team that benefits from sharing leads but whose members are rated and compensated according to individual productivity. A new study documents this effect and finds an antidote: posting information about how people are helping one another can keep co-operation alive.

Researchers recruited subjects for a decision-making game in which people could transfer points to others across multiple rounds. When rankings showed how many points each subject had, point transfers plummeted. But when the information also included the extent to which each person had previously shared their points, co-operation bounced back, eventually reaching the level achieved before the rankings were introduced. This happened, the researchers say, because people acted to reduce imbalances they saw. “If managers seek to develop a pay-it-forward culture of helping … they must pay attention to the potentially disruptive effects of performance rankings,” the researchers write.

That may involve peer-to-peer bonus systems, service awards and other public acknowledgments of those who go out of their way to be helpful, and performance reviews that explicitly include measures of co-operation, they say.

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ABOUT THE RESEARCH: Robust Systems of Co-operation in the Presence of Rankings: How Displaying Prosocial Contributions Can Offset the Disruptive Effects of Performance Rankings, by Cassandra R. Chambers and Wayne E. Baker (Organisation science, forthcoming).

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