Tom Nixon

An open letter to The Atheist Bus Campaign

After seeing Robert's tweet I just posted the following as a comment on the Athiest Bus Campaign blog. Please leave your own comment if you agree. I hope it's not too late.

As a fellow humanist, I'm a fan of your campaign and have been excited to see the amount of money raised. Well done!

But I wanted to write to ask you to PLEASE not spend ALL of this money on advertising. Spending a few thousand pounds on an advertising campaign is one thing, but you have now raised so much money that you could invest in something with real longevity rather than ads that will eventually disappear. It would be a powerful statement to show that The Atheist Bus Campaign is more than just an 'up yours' to organised religion.

How about asking your donors for ideas about how some or ideally most of it could be put to good use to demonstrate humanist ideals and do some good in the world, and not just 'shout' a message? You could invite nominations for charities that embody humanist ideals (probably most of them!) and then the supporters of this campaign could vote for which one gets a chunk of the money. Or take a look at some of the fantastic ideas that were developed at Social Innovation Camp. You could potentially fund one of these projects to a point where it becomes self-sustaining. You could even keep the public transport theme and fund the AccessCity project.

What a wonderful legacy this could be for the donors who have made your campaign such a roaring success.

Will you at least have a think about this and discuss it amongst yourselves and with the esteemed Mr Dawkins?

If you do something like this, there's a tenner coming from me. Until then, I don't think you really need my money.

Thanks again for bringing humanism onto the agenda, and good luck.

Tom

Reward systems do not improve the quality of work

I saw this tweet from The Chief Happiness Officer and was immediately intrigued:

“Not a single controlled study has shown a long-term improvement in the quality of work as a result of any reward system.” - Alfie Kohn

A quick spot of Googling turned up the source article.

It's well known that financial rewards are not the best way to motivate people. But this article takes it a step further and says that even the noncash rewards the people cite as being motivating to them don't really have any effect long-term:

"If people are asked which sort of incentive they like best, they may well pick something other than money. But look at how the question -- and, more disturbingly, the choice offered in some real organizations -- is framed: you only get to choose the flavor of the doggie biscuit you’ll be offered, not whether to replace the whole system."

So what does motivate employees?

"Numerous studies have shown that when people are asked what is most important to them about work, the top answers are factors such as interesting work to do, or good people to do it with, or a chance to have some say about what one does. These are not rewards. They are not offered conditionally, on the basis of satisfying someone who has more power than you do."

At NixonMcInnes, we've tried out various different rewards systems, even ones that give the control  to the employee. But in the end we have settled for a simple company-wide profit-share scheme and a focus on democratic principles. We have by no means cracked it, but we're working on it. And I think this article adds some validation to our direction.

"It’s particularly interesting to ask folks who have worked at organizations that don’t use rewards at all, those that pay people a decent salary and then help them create interesting tasks, a sense of community, and an opportunity to participate in making important decisions. These people, in my experience, rarely choose to return to a place in which employees receive patronizing pats on the head or other goodies for pleasing the boss. They want to be paid, not “incentivized”; encouraged, not praised; offered respect, not reinforcements."