Influencing Behaviour or Change Circumstances

Seth’s blog entry on changing circumstances awoken me to rethink the way I have been trying to manage our  telecommunication expenditure. All the whole, everyone talks about how to manage users’ behaviour e.g. how to get influence employees to use more of the VoIP service instead of IDD, how to educate employees to use the company-endorsed AT&T calling card instead of dialing directly using IDD services from their mobile phones. He says:

“If you don’t like the way someone is acting, understand you can’t change his behavior, you can only change his circumstances.”

He is right. People makes the best rational decision under the circumstances they are in. I often hear explanations like  “I had to call direct using the mobile phone at that time because it was a critical customer call, the deal was worth millions and I don’t do this all the time.” and from IT’s view, we just need 10% of the employees every month to have an exceptional situation to chalk up thousands of dollars (yes, each one can call up to $2000 per month when they roam) and you multiple that by the population that we have (thousands), you get the idea of the amount I am talking about.

Did a bit of self-brainstorming on how to change employee’s circumstances, below are a few ideas:

• Make every employee be aware and accountable for their indirect spend e.g. create a digital dashboard to let the employee see his cost to the company over time periods.
• Make the above dashboard public to the entire company
• Provide services that gives employees options to use cheaper alternatives e.g. provision spare phones in major offices and loan the phones to visiting employees
• Make best practice info on telecom usage, very accessible to employees

I have to admit, more time is needed to ponder on this topic. I shall revisit this topic again.

Suggestions/Ideas are welcome.