We all talk about the benefits of diversity in the workplace, but what about the benefits of reciprocity? Reciprocity, the back-and-forth exchange of favors over time, is a mutually beneficial practice that can help your business thrive, and at Harmonic Reciprocity Systems, we believe that understanding and incentivizing reciprocity could transform your workplace.
So, what does reciprocity in the workplace look like? Well, if you pay your employees, you are already engaging in a form of reciprocity. The employees give their time with the expectation that their financial needs will be met. The exchange is not immediate, so trust is a must. But even more important than the reciprocity between the employee and the employer is the reciprocity between employees, which increases trust and team performance.1 Employees help each other out and are helped in return, and this flow of favors over time, motivated by altruism and/or a desire to maintain a positive social image,2 helps to increase collaboration and break down organizational silos. However, if this flow of favors is cut off by bad actors who fail to reciprocate, employees who give the most may leave in search of greener pastures, increasing turnover rates and affecting your bottom line. So, if you want to encourage collaboration, break down silos, and retain your best team players, a culture of reciprocity is critical. The question then becomes, how do you cultivate a culture of reciprocity?
To cultivate reciprocity, there must be a shift in the underlying assumptions about value, and these assumptions must be factored into the organizational culture. This is challenging, because the value of reciprocity is fundamentally different than purely merit-based or team-based value systems. Merit-based assumptions tend to treat employees as disconnected individuals, while team-based assumptions are susceptible to group-think and free-riding. Valuing relationships themselves, and the reciprocity that characterizes them, encourages solidarity between employees while also recognizing their autonomy. It is a shift in perspective from “human capital” to “social capital” and can send a strong signal to employees that the organization values not just the people, but also the relationships they form through working together. But talk is cheap. To be truly effective, reciprocity should be factored into performance appraisals and/or compensation, for if the espoused and signaled values of an organization are not reflected in paychecks and promotions, employees will become jaded to a level that no number of pizza parties can resolve.
Reciprocity, the exchange of favors for mutual benefit, is a marker of healthy relationships and is a critical factor for a thriving organization. When reciprocity breaks down in an organization, trust deteriorates, leading to losses in productivity and employee retention. Therefore, it is of critical importance to cultivate an organizational culture that values reciprocity. This is a challenging task, but Harmonic Reciprocity Systems is here to help.
- Abigail Barr and Pieter Serneels, “Reciprocity in the Workplace,” Experimental Economics 12 (March 2008): 99–112, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-008-9202-8. ↩︎
- Ulrike Malmendier et al., “Rethinking Reciprocity,” Annual Review of Economics 6 (2014): 849–74. ↩︎