A common concern around the digital economy is the potential for the plentiful distractions available on the web to erode our productivity.  New research highlights the various factors that can contribute to our procrastination, including poor time management and perfectionism.  The consequences are often grave, with stress levels rising and job satisfaction falling.

The researchers take issue with the common perception of procrastination as a solely negative influence in the workplace, however, and argue instead that a certain amount of procrastination is perfectly fine.  Indeed, a bit of time out each day is important for the best of us.

Nonetheless, it’s probably something that both individuals and managers wish to reduce.  A team from Harvard, Yale and BYU have developed a tool that they believe will help to overcome that, at least in terms of financial decision making.

In a recent study, they revealed that giving employees a choice of either picking up a prescription at the pharmacy or getting it delivered to their home resulted in take up of the home delivery option (ie the most financially beneficial one) from 6% to 42%.

“The cost of not taking action really matters in getting people to do something,” the researchers explain. “If you want people to get something done, make it less costly. Make it easy to sign up, and make it costly to opt out.”

Active choice

The heart of the research revolved around a principle known as ‘active choice’, with the study trying to encourage participants to favor the home delivery method of receiving their prescriptions.  This method is favored by employers because it’s more cost effective for both them and the employee.  The active choice experiment mandated that participants chose one of the two options, but didn’t provide any financial subsidies for either one.

“Enrollment using active choice strikes a balance between the extremes of opt-in and opt-out enrollment,” the authors say. “With active choice enrollment, potential participants are asked to choose for themselves without the bias of a default outcome capturing passive individuals.”

Prior to the experiment, approximately 6% of employees typically chose the home delivery method, but after being given a time-limited choice to make within a 3-month window, this jumped to 42%.

“If you look at 6 percent enrollment, you could assume that people just aren’t that interested in a program,” the authors continue. “But that was a false conclusion. The difference between 6 percent and 42 percent is that many people are procrastinators. They like the idea of home delivery, but they don’t get around to signing up. Active choice helps people not procrastinate choices that are in their self-interest to make.”

The data suggests that without the financial incentive provided by the loss of insurance subsidy, people tend to default to the pharmacy pick-up option because their expenditure on prescriptions are relatively low.  If this was actually deployed in the company in question however, it would save the workforce over $400,000 per year, and the company nearly $300,000.

The findings are hot on the heels of previous work from the team that found this active choice approach was also effective in helping people save for retirement via a pension scheme.