MoreThanNow awarded a UKRI Sustainable Innovation Grant
Earlier this year, Innovate UK announced a £191m ‘Sustainable Innovation Competition’ to fund ideas across all sectors that will help the UK rebuild after the effects of COVID-19. We’re proud to announce MoreThanNow were awarded a grant to bring an experimental approach to “Motivation and Team Dynamics in the wake of Covid-19”. We’re equally pleased to have presented a scientific approach to workplace culture as a means to support the UK’s recovery.
“MoreThanNow’s idea is an organic extension of their unique expertise in applied behavioural science. It is designed specifically in the context of Covid-19 to provide clearer evidence of two known correlates of employee productivity through the use of classic experimental method applied to real organisational settings. The value of the idea is potentially large given the impact of Covid-19 on the workplace.”
Our Proposal Summary
Who we are
MoreThanNow is a behavioural science practice. We are one of the few organisations conducting randomised controlled experiments in the workplace, partnering with influential organisations including BT, Ericsson, Novartis, Citi, Phoenix Group, Nationwide Building Society and Transport for London.
The challenge: COVID-19 and The workplace
COVID-19 and its consequences have sent shockwaves through HR and management communities, as they attempt to respond to the seismic shifts in employee engagement caused by a rapid, and potentially long-term move towards virtual work. The traditional consultancy response has been to leap into the unknown, gambling with working lives that deserve better. Our alternative offers the opportunity to design and robustly evaluate cultural interventions with experimental evaluation. It’s an approach we believe is essential in light of the challenge we collectively face:
Mental Health - UK Charity, Mind, find 1-in-5 adults reporting their mental health as declining during the pandemic. In 2014, the OECD estimated productivity issues caused by mental health cost the UK £42bn/year.
Productivity - An under-explored shift to virtual work is a risk to the UK economy (The Guardian, 2020). Any subsequent decrease in 'employee engagement' will impact productivity and absenteeism, already estimated to cost the UK £13.4bn/year (Perkbox, 2018).
Inequality - Disadvantaged groups are likely to be disproportionately impacted. The effect of COVID-19 on mental health has been greater on women and young people (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2020). The 2018 McGregor-Smith Report on Race in the Workplace highlighted an unequal working environment, now in danger of being amplified in a virtual domain.
“The traditional consultancy response has been to leap into the unknown, gambling with working lives that deserve better. Our alternative offers the opportunity to design and robustly evaluate cultural interventions with experimental evaluation.”
The PROOF OF CONCEPT: an experimental approach to culture and change
Over the past three months, we've developed a diagnostic for self-determined motivation and psychological safety within teams. We are interested in these outcome measures as validated predictors of performance and mental wellbeing, and as a means of identifying unique needs across already disadvantaged groups. We are also keen to explore the relationships between these dynamics (gathered through self-report data) alongside performance metrics and the newly accessible behavioural data from tools such as MS365 Insights.
However, our proof of concept isn’t about insight but intervention. We want to know whether we can change people’s experience for the better, and we want to evaluate the exact impact of our work with an randomised controlled experiment. In this case, we’ll test a 6-week manager capability programme underpinned by our #ThinkSmall methodology.
We’ll partner with two large organisations to identify a sample of 100 managers and c. 700 employees. Once our baseline measures are recorded, we’ll randomly allocate them to treatment or control groups, putting one set of managers through the capability programme. Our task is to pinpoint the impact on how their teams feel (motivation and psychological safety), and what they do (performance and behavioural data), as well as any demographic differences.
“Our idea isn’t about insight but intervention. We want to know whether we can change people’s experience for the better, and we want to evaluate the exact impact of our work with an experiment.”
Why it’s innovative.
MoreThanNow have been at the forefront of applied behavioural science in the workplace since 2016. The innovation in this proposal is not the validated diagnostic, nor the interventions, but the experimental approach to evaluation. Testing culture-change interventions using randomised controlled experimentation is innovative, novel, and starkly different from the advisory methods served by the employee engagement market. It’s also the best way to extend a hand to the academic community at a time when we need them most.
For that reason, we’re delighted to finish this overview by announcing Joe Devlin, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, ex-Head of Experimental Psychology and Vice Dean of Enterprise and Innovation at University College London as our Academic Advisor for this research programme.
“A well argued and well-founded proposal aimed at increasing the scientific basis for effective, evidence-based organisational interventions designed to increase employee engagement and successful organisational cultures. This is particularly significant in a post Covid-19 world, which needs to find ways to assure and increase productivity in fundamentally changed working environments.”
“In these difficult times, we have seen the best of British business innovation. The pandemic is not just a health emergency but one that impacts society and the economy,
“MoreThanNow’s work on behavioural science and organisational culture, along with every initiative Innovate UK has supported through this fund, is an important step forward in driving sustainable economic development.”
We’ve been pioneering the application of behavioural science to the workplace since 2016. Our approach and methods are still radical, but we know how to make them work in the largest organisations in the world. If you’d like to explore what we can do together, we’d love to talk.