It is often difficult for us to understand why specific performance is or is not achieved in the company; Key Behavioral Indicators, or KBIs, are critical to this understanding and achieving ever-better results.
Let’s see what they are and how to leverage them in HR.
What are Key Behavioral Indicators
Key Behavioral Indicators (KBI) are metrics used to monitor and measure organisational behaviors.
Unlike Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which focus on end results, KBIs concentrate on the behaviors that lead to those results.
Key Behavioral Indicators (KBIs) are an emerging concept in Behavioral Economics. They are used to monitor and measure behaviors that lead to certain outcomes within an organization.
KBIs in Behavioral Economics
Behavioral Economics focuses on understanding how people make real decisions, which are often influenced by psychological and cognitive factors such as cognitive biases, emotions, and rationality constraints. KBIs fit into this context as tools to:
Identify key behaviors: Using the principles of Behavioral Economics, organizations can identify which specific behaviors lead to desired outcomes. For example, frequent team collaboration might be a key behavior that leads to faster innovation.
Monitoring and evaluation: KBIs allow for continuous monitoring of these key behaviors. This is important because while traditional KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) measure results, KBIs provide insight into the processes that lead to those results, allowing timely interventions to correct any deviations.
Behavioral interventions: organizations can use nudging1 and boosting2 techniques to positively influence KBIs. For example, they can implement reminders and incentives to promote participation in continuing education programs.
Applications of KBIs in the Organization
KBIs see many applications in organizations, the following are worth mentioning.
- Training and Development
– KBI: Participation in training programs, application of skills learned.
– Behavioral Interventions: Offer incentives for participation, use gamification techniques to make training more engaging.
- Collaboration and Communication.
– KBI: Number of inter-team meetings, quality of feedback exchanged between colleagues.
– Behavioral Interventions: Reorganize work spaces to facilitate interaction, provide digital platforms that promote communication.
- Employee Health and Wellness.
– KBI: Frequency of use of corporate wellness programs, participation in health promotion activities.
– Behavioral Interventions: Implement regular reminders about program benefits, offer small incentives for participation.
- Innovation and Creativity.
– KBI: Number of ideas proposed for improvements, participation in brainstorming sessions.
– Behavioral Interventions: Create environments that stimulate creativity, promote a corporate culture that is open to risk and innovation.
Benefits of KBIs in Behavioral Economics.
Let’s look at some benefits of adopting KBIs in the enterprise:
– Proactivity: they allow behaviors to be intervened in a timely manner, before it is reflected in the final results.
– Better Understanding: they provide a more detailed view of organizational processes, helping to better understand how and why certain outcomes are achieved.
– Personalization: interventions can be tailored to specific behaviors identified, making management strategies more effective.
A practical example: collaboration between different teams
Let’s imagine a company that wants to increase productivity through better collaboration between teams:
- KBI identification: the company identifies as KBI the number of projects successfully completed through inter-team collaborations and the frequency of coordination meetings between departments.
- Monitoring: the company implements a system to monitor these indicators, collecting data on how frequently teams work together and the results achieved.
- Interventions: using nudging techniques, the company might organize social events to foster acquaintance among teams, or change office layouts to encourage spontaneous interactions.
- Results: over time, KBI data show an increase in inter-team collaborations and a positive correlation with overall company productivity.
A bridge between motivation and results
This role as a “bridge” between people and results has implications that can potentially help understand and measure complex and not necessarily direct relationships, such as the relationship between motivation and performance.
Some examples of KBI may include:
– Participation in Training Programs: measuring the percentage of employees participating in training and professional development sessions.
– Collaboration between teams: monitor the frequency and effectiveness of collaborations between different teams within the organization.
– Employee feedback: assess the frequency and quality of feedback given and received between employees and managers.
KBIs are useful because they enable organizations to identify and promote behaviors that underlie excellent performance.
If, as in the example, increased team collaboration is associated with increased productivity, the organization can implement strategies to incentivize collaboration further.
KBI: measuring to improve
Key behavioral indicators (KBIs) are powerful tools within behavioral economics that can improve organizational management by focusing on the behaviors that drive results.
Of course, we mentioned KBIs (and KPIs) because what cannot be measured cannot be improved. For HR Intelligence, the relationship and combined power of KBIs, KPIs, and HR Analytics is quite obvious.
Through KBIs, we can give our data even more power and significance and measure the change in behaviors that bring concrete results in our organization.
1 Nudging: a technique that modifies the decision-making environment to guide people toward desirable choices without imposing obligations.
2 Boosting: an approach that enhances individuals’ skills and knowledge to help them make better decisions in an autonomous and informed way
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