Never Reward Your Volunteers

This brilliant post on Psyblog explains why you should never pay volunteers or set fixed rewards for any behaviour.

What they had been motivated to do intrinsically, they were now being given an external, extrinsic motivation for. This provided too much justification for what they were doing and so, paradoxically, afterwards they drew less.

Not only this but rewards are dangerous for another reason: because they remind us of obligations, of being made to do things we don't want to do. Children are given rewards for eating all their food, doing their homework or tidying their bedrooms. So rewards become associated with painful activities that we don't want to do. The same goes for grown-ups: money becomes associated with work and work can be dull, tedious and painful. So when we get paid for something we automatically assume that the task is dull, tedious and painful—even when it isn't.

This is why play can become work when we get paid. The person who previously enjoyed painting pictures, weaving baskets, playing the cello or even writing blog posts, suddenly finds the task tedious once money has become involved.

When tasks are inherently interesting to us rewards can damage our motivation by undermining our natural talent for self-regulation.

Make sure you read the full post, it’s brilliant. Aside, Psyblog is one of those rare blogs which makes you feel smarter with every post you read. 

Comments

[Stuart Foster]

Really interesting perspective Rich, added Psyblog to my RSS as a result.

This would seem counter intuitive to normal business practice but the psychology does make sense. Thanks for making me think this morning!

[John Mark Troyer]

For Communities, an online points/reputation or earned badges can be a powerful reward system. Platforms like Jive & StackExchange have these features built in. It turns participating into a game. Even when those points don't connect back to any "real-world" rewards, they are powerful motivators.

For companies working with volunteers, you also need to be careful of assigning them work in advance in return for any type of reward. Check out AOL's problem from 1999: http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/1999/04/16/aol_community/print.html

[Chuck]

That makes sense, but at least sometimes, rewards, however trivial, seem to ratchet up the enthusiasm rather than kill it. Where is that line?

[Alison]

It was a really interesting blog, but in my scenario I have to disagree. I manage a team of 25+ volunteer moderators who are recipients of a rewards scheme. I've found since implementation nearly 2 years ago they feel valued and appreciated as part of the team.

To use the blog's analogy not rewarding them is akin to asking the toddlers to draw - whilst others around them (staff) were being financially compensated. (This highlights a differentiation I know.)

Our vols are well aware their actions contribute to a successfully viable business model - which wouldn't be sustainable were they staff - so I feel a reward system is a great way of acknowledging their contribution to a fantastic community. One that we all know is a business at the end of the day.