Behavior Modification and Absenteeism: Intervention in One Industrial Setting Essay Example

select a card from a deck of playing cards and at the end of the five day work week the employee will have 5 cards which is a normal poker hand and the employee with the highest hand wins $20. 00.

Twenty dollars may not sound like a lot but the average wage for these employees was $4. 86 with the average mployee’s education level being at the eleventh grade range. The possibility of winning $20. 00 a week was a great incentive to these employees. The experiment ran for 16 weeks and absentee measures continued to be for an additional 22 weeks to see the long term effectiveness of the program. Did this behavioral modification work? In the beginning the absenteeism rate of the experimental group was 3. 01% with 2. 31% being the goal rate. The actual achievement of the intervention was 2. 46% which showed a decrease in absentee ism by 18. 27% so yes reinforcement through behavioral modification does work.

In fact during a few weeks of the experiment the game was canceled and the absentee rate immediately rose , but one the game was reinstituted absenteeism dropped to 2. 4% (lower that the goal rate) and stayed at that level for the next six weeks.