Improving Worker Productivity Through Tailored Performance Feedback: Field Experimental Evidence from Bus Drivers

Abstract:

How should performance feedback be tailored to improve worker productivity? In a large-scale field experiment with 409 bus drivers and over 500,000 trip-level observations, we test the potential of two forms of individual feedback on improving worker productivity: in-person coaching and written peer-comparison feedback.

We find that a) in-person coaching leads to significant improvements on multiple driving dimensions, but only temporarily; b) the announcement of the written feedback program has a substantial and significant effect across all outcome measures; c) targeted peer-comparison feedback is generally ineffective; d) in-person coaching

reduces the effect of written peer-comparison feedback but not vice versa, and e) dosing negative feedback or accompanying it with positive feedback has no effect. There is treatment heterogeneity with the lowest-productivity drivers benefiting most from in-person coaching.