Psychological approaches to productivity improvement

A review of 207 recent (1971-1981) American experiments using 1 or more of 11 psychological approaches to improving employee productivity found that 87% reported improvement in at least 1 concrete measure of productivity. The kinds of programs that were most often successful were training, goal setting, financial compensation, participative supervision, and sociotechnical systems design. It was also found that more favorable attitudes toward work often resulted from the productivity programs, showing that productivity and quality of work life can be improved together. (17 ref)