Effects of an informational brochure, lottery-based financial incentive, and public posting on absenteeism of direct-care human services employees.
A brochure, small raffle, and public chart cut staff absenteeism in half at a special-ed school.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors tested a three-part package on 29 classroom aides in a special-education school.
Staff got a short brochure that explained why attendance matters.
They also entered a weekly lottery if they came every day; winners got 25 dollars.
Finally, daily absence counts were posted on the staff room wall.
The team tracked absenteeism and lost wages over the study period.
What they found
Total absences dropped by half after the package started.
The school also paid out 1,100 dollars less in substitute wages.
Gains held steady for the last six weeks of the study.
How this fits with other research
Perrin et al. (2016) swapped the lottery for simple goal setting and still raised staff performance.
Their target was data collection, not attendance, so the tools differ but the public-posting engine stays the same.
Potter et al. (2013) moved the money idea to homeless adults in job training.
They used straight pay instead of a raffle and also doubled attendance, showing the incentive travels across populations.
Petscher et al. (2006) came earlier and used self-monitoring plus prompts to fix token-economy errors.
Like Wong et al. (2009), they mixed antecedents and feedback, proving multi-piece packages work for classroom staff.
Why it matters
You can cut last-minute call-outs without a big budget.
Try a one-page why-it-matters flyer, a 25-dollar weekly raffle, and a public tally sheet.
Post the sheet where staff take breaks so everyone sees it daily.
Track absences for two weeks before you start to show your boss the savings.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Chronic absenteeism is a problem encountered by many human services organizations. Large-scale intervention projects to reduce staff absences have incorporated applied behavior analysis methods but there are few studies in the extant literature. In the present study, the authors record staff absenteeism at a specialized school for students with developmental disabilities during a baseline phase and following implementation of a systems-change intervention that included distribution of an informational brochure, lottery-based financial incentive, and public posting. Intervention is found to be associated with improved staff attendance and reduced "lost wages." Practice and research implications are discussed.
Behavior modification, 2009 · doi:10.1177/0145445508320624