According to a study by three universities in Hamburg and Oslo, performance bonuses promote aggressive behavior in professional life. According to a study by the Kühne Logistics University (KLU), the University of Hamburg and the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, available to the German Press Agency, such remuneration systems can motivate employees to work hard and achieve even more. But the downside is that employees with performance-related pay mentally get into a fight mode and behave more aggressively towards colleagues than employees without such incentives.
“It’s like any parlor game: the aggressiveness caused by the competition can either be translated into more drive and effort, or you play a little ‘dirtier’ to be sure of winning,” explained KLU professor Niels Van Quaquebeke. Younger employees and men in particular tend to behave more aggressively, which in turn is detrimental to the working atmosphere.
Rather focus on the team
“People also often lose their intrinsic (coming from within) motivation through additional external incentives and in the long run a bonus motivates less and less, so that companies have to step up,” warned Van Quaquebeke. In this respect, from his point of view, it would make more sense not to attribute bonuses to individual employees, but rather to allocate them to entire teams. “Organization bonuses, which are to be understood as a share in the profit and thus as a sign of fairness, are also better suited.”
In general, managers should not spend their time creating control and reward systems. “They should enable connectedness, autonomy and the experience of competence – needs that all people have,” said Van Quaquebeke. He also pointed out that the tide is currently turning from an employer to an employee market and that companies will have to rethink accordingly.
According to their own statements, the researchers carried out several investigations for their study – an experiment with 104 participants and two field studies with 96 and 286 people. “Each of the three samples was very diverse. As such, it’s not a firm-specific effect, but rather very robust,” said Van Quaquebeke. In addition, previous studies suggest that the effects can also be found in companies that have not been examined.
