Isolation of Effort from Selection in Promotion Reforms
RCTClinical Trial
Organizational performance improvements following civil service human resource reforms can reflect either screening and attracting higher-ability recruits (selection channel) or motivating incumbent employees to increase daily output (effort channel).
Picture this
A workplace reform can boost total team output either by attracting smarter job applicants from outside or by inspiring current employees to work harder; isolating the pure effort effect requires keeping the exact same team of workers in place without hiring anyone new.
What the evidence says
Establishing meritocratic promotion rules generated a statistically significant 22% increase in household health visits (+1.497 visits per worker; p < 0.01) among incumbent staff, proving that promotion fairness directly stimulates worker effort independently of recruitment selection effects.
- Who was studied
- N = 2,009 incumbent Community Health Workers across 372 Peripheral Health Units in Sierra Leone evaluated over a 10-month trial.
- How
- Field experiment (RCT) tracking output among a fixed cohort of frontline workers with zero new recruitment or employee turnover during the intervention period to isolate incentive-driven effort from selection dynamics.
What to do
Hold organizational recruitment and worker turnover fixed during human resource pilot evaluations to isolate pure worker effort incentives from talent selection effects.
From the source
"In contrast to these studies, we observe few promotions in the span of our study... isolating the incentive effect of meritocratic promotions on existing worker productivity from recruitment/selection dynamics."
Promotions_and_Productivity_The_Role_of_Meritocracy_and_Pay_Progression.pdf