Harvard Business Review: The Rise of Behavioral Economics and Its Influence on Organizations

“A few years ago, for instance, General Electric’s leaders wanted to address the issue of smoking, believing that it impacted its employees negatively. So, in collaboration with Kevin Volpp and his co-authors, they conducted a randomized controlled trial (think: field experiment). Employees in the treatment group each received $250 if they stopped for six months and $400 if they stopped for 12 months. Those in the control group did not receive any incentive. The researchers found that the treatment group had three times the success rate of the control, and that the effect persisted even after the incentives were discontinued after 12 months. Based on this work, GE changed its policy and started using this approach for its then-152,000 employees.” Read more here.