When people have the right mix of attitude,
subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, their intention to
change behaviour will be strong.
Their intention is only constrained by their actual level of control.
In
this final of a series of four articles using Ajzen's theory of planned
behaviour, I will explore what is required to change people's behaviour
with regard to serving customers, as an example. This article explores
intentions and the limitations of actual behavioural control. It
illustrates what influence may be brought to bear on it in the
workplace to maximise the actual behavioural control.
Actual
behavioural control in a corporate environment is equivalent to
empowerment. There are four requirements for people to feel empowered.
Two
requirements for people to feel empowered form part of what determines
the subjective norm towards the desired behaviour. They are:
- Having the authority to perform the behaviour.
- Having that authority communicated to you unambiguously in written
form, such as policies and performance measures and congruently in
verbal and non-verbal cues.
Two form the core of actual behavioural control. They are:
1. Possessing the right skills and knowledge.
2. Having readily available data necessary to make any decisions required as part of the desired behaviour
In our serving customers example, let us consider the following scenario.
The
scene is an hotel front desk. The desired behaviour we want is for
attendants at the front desk to resolve customer complaints without
referral to a supervisor except in specific situations outside the
hotel's control.
We have established through our coaching,
counselling and appraisal systems that resolving problems quickly and
independently is a good thing (attitude towards the behaviour) to do.
Our reward and recognition scheme focuses, at least in part, on
successful independent resolution of problems and complaints.
Our
attendant's peers, friends and family (subjective norm) think that
being able to act independently to resolve customer complaints is good
too and that we should take on the responsibility.
Our attendants
have great confidence (perceived behavioural control) that they can
resolve issues independently. They believe they have the right levels
of skill and knowledge to resolve almost any issue as they have
attended training specifically aimed at improving their rapport
building, conflict resolution and decision making skills.
From
the above scenario it would seem almost axiomatic that our attendant's
intention towards resolving customer complaints would be very positive
and would result in our desired behaviour.
What, however, would be the consequence on the translation from intention to the desired behaviour of the following:
- The authority limit for any decision is $20
- The effectiveness of the training was not evaluated and whilst the
attendants have remembered some of the knowledge they have not learnt
sufficient to be skilled at conflict resolution
- The training was not followed up to reinforce the skills acquired in the training
- A new supervisor is hired who does not have the same view on
empowering people as the other supervisors and receives no training and
coaching to have the same view and practices
- A new attendant is hired with an attitude towards taking
responsibility that is poor and they are not counselled on their
attitude
Limiting authority limits the attendant's actual control
over the resolution of problems. The best hotels in the world with the
best customer service have no limit on the dollar value of resolving
problems.
Attending training is not enough to create an actual level of control. Much training is ineffective through poor design.
The
level of knowledge retained from training drops to around 12% within
six weeks of undertaking training if there is no follow up or use of
the training. Unless this is an hotel with a lot of complaints, it is
likely an individual attendant may have only a few interactions of each
type, within six weeks where the skills learnt during the training are
exercised. Follow up training and coaching, if applied, can help memory
retention to exceed 80%.
New supervisors or attendants with
different attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control to what is
required to have a positive intention, reduce the consistency in
approach and perceived values. Unless recruitment and induction are
strong components of the design of the intervention to create the
desired behaviour long term, the desired behaviour will be short lived.
Empowerment,
recruitment, induction and ongoing competency development of
individuals, supervisors and managers are all necessary components to
translate intentions to change behaviour to actual changed behaviour.
