# Incentives and Office Work By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2024-04-25 What types of incentives exist for office work? Whereas the actual incentive can vary, only a handful of incentive types are available. One might get a promotion, raise, time off, public recognition, or a simple thank you. This means that incentives fall into power, money, time, pride, or esteem categories. Incentives exist to motivate action. In an office, incentives are designed to encourage the action of producing more work or producing superior work. Incentives could be used to attempt to make more superior work. Why not try for both? Those in offices attempt to incentivize these two things even when unnecessary. Work of the typical standard and quantity might be more than sufficient for the organizational needs. It is unclear why management would want to incentivize more or better work in such a context. This may be self-serving. If those under one’s direction produce more/better work, one can use this to justify one’s promotion or pay increase. This becomes a sort of office-sanctioned pyramid scheme. Whereas this could be the case, the answer might be more basic. Attempting to get people to do more might be part of our hardwiring. After so much industrialization, it might be difficult to conceive of work without the pressure to do more. Always more. On a production line, this makes sense. More is better, and there is little opportunity cost associated with pursuing an increase in production. The same is not true in terms of office work. Doing more might preclude thinking and creativity. Being busy is not the same as being productive; being productive is not the same as being innovative. Organizations seem to have a lock on being able to incentivize people to perform. It is unclear that they have had much success in incentivizing people to come up with transformative ways of unleashing human potential. Money, time, pride, and power will incentivize most people. They fail miserably to inspire. One might wonder if incentivization is only needed where inspiration is lacking. #### Related Items [[Incentives]] [[Work]] [[Organization]] [[Productivity]] [[Creative]] [[Inspiring]]