Insight
Ariely: Directly asking employees beats proxy metrics like sick days
“And when we don't look at what's happening inside people's brains, and we look at other things instead, we're giving up a lot. So for example, think about something like sick days. Sick days is obviously a really good indication of how excited people are about…”
Insight
Ariely: Third-party surveys yield better employee data than internal collection
“When we ask people with these data providers, it is very important that the data is being collected by a third party. You know, if the company is trying to collect the data directly from employees, there's always a risk that people are trying to create some im…”
Insight
Ariely: Fairness and workplace pay are primarily driven by relativity
“Relative pay is more important. Relative fairness is more important. Fairness is all about relativity.”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: The importance of inclusive innovation increased during COVID
“We found one of the things that changed during COVID is what we call inclusive innovation has increased in its importance.”
Insight
Ariely: Employees adapt to office perks, but appreciation yields lasting motivation
“If you think about things like better coffee, better tables, better chairs compared to feeling appreciated, There's just no comparison, and the thing that happens there is if you get better coffee, and I'm a big fan of coffee, so I love good coffee, if you get…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ariely: The positive performance impact of employee benefits will fade post-COVID
“Now, I think that will go away, but it was interesting to see how this timing did change a little bit the mix of what was important.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ariely: Sector-specific human capital models are no better than universal models
“So we didn't do this research during COVID, but we did, of course, in the pre-COVID data, right, from 2006 and on, and we found no difference. When you do kind of statistical modeling, there's what's called nested models. So you could say, let me create a mode…”
Insight
Ariely: Human motivation factors drive impact across all industries, not just tech
“There are big differences about people care, and we can all imagine how people who care at Google are going to create a bigger impact, but no, people who care, it would manifest everywhere. So the things that we're capturing are Feeling appreciated. Feeling th…”
Insight
Ariely: Remote work dramatically elevates intrinsic over extrinsic motivation
“You put employees at home, All of a sudden, the role of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation changes dramatically.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ariely: Human capital sentiment data has an 18-month half-life
“So in general, what we find is that this data has a half lifetime of about 18 months.”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Higher National Violence Correlates With More COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
“There's a new research that shows that looks at 67 countries and show that the more violence there is in the country, the more they have conspiracy theories about COVID 19.”
Insight
Ariely: The intra-empathy gap causes major mistakes in judging motivation
“This question, by the way, is about how difficult it is for us to estimate emotional states of things we don't experience, and it's also connected to our discussion here today, because, you know, when you are setting up a motivation for your employees, you're …”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Soweto residents sometimes spend up to two years of income on funerals
“People in Soweto spend up to two years sometimes of income on funerals.”
Assertion Supported
Ariely: Expensive painkillers relieve more pain than identical cheap ones
“So in one study, we checked what happens when we give people expensive medications and cheap medication, and we show that the expensive medication create higher belief, and therefore they're also more effective. So we gave people electrical shocks, and we saw …”
Insight
Ariely: Cash compensation settles past obligations while gifts build future relationships
“If I pay you, What is the time horizon of payment? The time horizon usually you've done something for me and I'm paying you back. The books are closed, right? It's backward looking. It's not, I'm paying you and now you owe me. It's like you did something, I'm …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ariely: Discretionary effort gap in the knowledge economy will continue widening
“Everybody in the knowledge economy has a large range, and that range is only going to increase.”
Insight
Ariely: Companies cannot contract discretionary effort or employee imagination
“Companies can contract on the minimum amount of work you need to do, but nobody can contract on how much energy you're really putting toward work, how imaginative you're trying to be, how much you're reading extra, thinking hard, and so on.”
Dan Ariely