In Simple Words
Imagine a store owner who pays employees based on overall weekly store sales versus one who directly observes daily arrival times; employees show up much more reliably when they know their direct physical presence is noted and rewarded by their boss, rather than depending on sales totals affected by weather or foot traffic.
Teachers in Pakistani private schools
- Flat 5% raise
- About 145 days present
- Manager-rated raise
- Estimated 6 extra days present
Biometric attendance during the incentive year. Evidence for the full-sample increase was modest (p = 0.072); the restricted sample also increased. Test-based arm omitted, with no clear difference between schemes.
See source →Research question
Employee absenteeism severely degrades organizational output, but outcome-based objective incentives often fail to motivate basic physical presence when output is noisy.
Participants
N = 6,394 teacher-level biometric attendance records across 295 school clusters in Pakistan.
Study Design
Randomized controlled trial (RCT) utilizing daily biometric clock-in/out administrative data to compare flat raises, objective test-score rank raises, and subjective manager-discretionary raises.
Results
Subjective performance incentives increased teacher attendance by 5.927 days present per year relative to control (p < 0.10; 3.340 days in restricted sample, p < 0.01), whereas objective incentives generated a non-statistically significant increase of 2.426 days (p = 0.570).
Takeaway
Deploy manager-discretionary subjective evaluations to directly incentivize fundamental baseline employee behaviors like physical workplace attendance.
Source and citation
See source →Read alongside the research
Plain-English glossary
Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.
- Randomized controlled trial
A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.
ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.
GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →- Statistically significant
A label used when a result passes a chosen statistical threshold, often p < 0.05. It does not show how large or useful an effect is. A result that is not statistically significant does not prove there is no effect.
ExampleA study reports p = 0.03 against a 0.05 threshold. It passes that test, but the effect could still be too small to matter.
American Statistical Association · Statement on p-values ↗Read more about statistically significant →