The Power of Immediate Incentives

How do you build new employee or subcontractor habits that are necessary but still need consistency? For example, how do you make workers log daily activities with a new project management software?

In the latest episode of the AEC Business podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Drew Carter, the CEO, and Laurel Newman, Ph.D. Newman, a behavioral scientist at Whistle Rewards.

The startup provides a science-backed platform that automatically and instantly rewards employees and subcontractors, driving safety, compliance, performance, and tech adoption.

In a people business, behavior dictates outcomes

Laurel Newman discussed the 360-degree model of behavior that Whistle uses. It examines three core reasons why people would or wouldn’t do a behavior.

The first aspect of behavior change is awareness. Often, individuals may need to be made aware of the behaviors they are expected to exhibit, such as completing a training program or meeting a deadline. Additionally, the ability or ease of performing a behavior is crucial in driving change. Furthermore, motivation is a vital component in driving behavior change.

These three principles may sound simple, but surprisingly, many companies don’t consider all of them and consequently don’t get the results they’re looking for.

How Whistle Rewards works

Many U.S. companies use traditional gift cards to reward positive behavior, but they have drawbacks for both the giver and the receiver. Drew mentions a client who used to spend $2 million on gift cards, of which only 50-70% ever get used before expiration.

Whistle offers both physical and virtual client-branded Visa prepaid cards. When an employee deserves recognition, employers can immediately and automatically reward them with funds deposited directly onto their card and into their Whistle virtual wallet. If the money remains unused, the employer gets it back.

Whistle is tax-compliant and more cost-effective than traditional gift cards.

Small rewards – significant results

In the U.S., many tradespeople make $100,000 or more annually. One Whistle client’s average reward was $5. Can such a small incentive have an impact?

Drew shared their experience with Corey Construction, for whom they set up automated incentives within Procore for daily logs:

“We ran an initial pilot with them across nine of their projects. And within 30 days, we had 100% participation. Everyone on the project participated. And on average, they increased that compliance by 50% within 30 days.”

After running the program for 30 days, the incentive was turned off. Over a year later, the company had lost only 10% of the gain.

Permanent change with small rewards is possible!