head2head: A sweet dilemma - One Hershey's kiss at a time.

Arguing from a socio-cognitive perspective, I'll point out why candy (or some other forms of a serotonin-raising food treat) can be vital to a happy and productive workforce. [Full disclosure: I myself am a manager and a candy dish junkie.]

The office candy dish by the boss's desk provides a way to gauge average mood of your team members, establish trust and routines at a very basic physiological level and encourage creative risk taking and improve collective problem solving on a team wide basis.

We'll start with human physiology. Most cubicle dwellers spend somewhere between 7 and a half and 9 hours at the office and during that time face emotional and physical pressures and highs and lows of energy. Candy is consumed at both extremes of this process. No one is eating candy when they are a busy and engrossed in a project or laying low and procrastinating; they either eat when they have completed a task or when they need a break from a project. As manager, seeing who comes to the bowl, when and in what mood helps you gauge their productivity and their daily working style.

It also places you at the forefront of two very critical processes that go on in your employee's work day: At the Success Update: "I've finished Step 3 and I'm ready to move to step 4" or at the Sticking Point: "I am trying to come up with a solution," "I just got a nasty stressful e-mail," or "I'm having trouble getting started on this piece of an assignment." In either case you'll want to intervene either with kudos and next-step instructions for a Success Point or resources or motivation for a Sticking Point.

In many cases your employees will become used to coming to your desk to reward themselves with candy to report on progress or to console themselves with candy to seek your advice. In the latter situation will not become a whine session due to the heroic candy dish – it is socially unacceptable for one person to take more than two pieces of candy in one trip. Thus they have to go away for a period of time and return with something new to report in order to receive more candy.

This routine establishes a trust model between individuals. Coleman defines trust as an action that involves a voluntary transfer of resources from the truster to the trustee with no real commitment from the trustee. In other words establishing trust is a great way to get your employees to do work on your behalf without expecting immediate financial compensation. It's important to note that trusting another party when one is compelled to is essentially reliance, lacking a belief in benevolence and competence. However I would argue that by providing a regular supply of candy a manager can display consistency and benevolence, thus deepening the trust beyond standard a traditional trust schemas based solely on power.

Deeper trust communities encourage the individuals within them to take greater risks. Risk taking employees innovate more often, which can lead to better results for the projects they undertake. The candy dish is just one tool in an overall approach to supportive, trust-building management however it is a simple and effective one that should not be taken lightly.

Read Optimistic Skeptic's take.

head2head: A sweet dilemma - Don't bring your home to work

Friedrick von Hayek pointed out the difficulty people have living in two worlds. On the one hand, we have our home life, which is governed by love and respect; on the other are our market interactions, which are governed by incentives and efficiency. No one advocates bringing market rules home with them. Tyler Cowen elaborates on this point in his recent book, Discover Your Inner Economist. He says that a parent would be mistaken to use monetary incentives to get their kids to behave or do chores around the house. Doing so would make one's child view their family responsibilities as a market relationship. As such, they would feel less responsibility to work beyond the marginal utility of their compensation. Further, when the child becomes old enough to work outside of the home, the wages the parent pays for chores and respect must compete with what the kid can get working at Starbucks.

Similarly, you can't bring family rules to work with you. The employee/employer relationship is firmly grounded in the world of market incentives. If you want an employee to stay late or be more productive, you have to offer a bonus or at least offer comp-time. Bosses, unlike family members, can't get away with saying, "this would really mean a lot to me."

This is why the free candy plan misses out on basic incentives. Free candy is a concession from the employer that requires no added effort from employees. It's like you're bargaining with someone and you offer $5 for nothing in return. After the initial positive feelings, the candy will simply become an expected part of the compensation package. At this point, the employer will have to maintain the level of candy in order to get the same productivity out of their workers. On the other hand, any stop in the flow of candy will be viewed as a decrease in compensation, creating an incentive for workers to work less.

There is also a human physiology aspect at work here. Candy provides a short-lived sugar rush, followed by a crash. If workers are eating the candy throughout the day, there will be peaks and crashes throughout the office, potentially wreaking havoc on productivity.

A better plan would be to use the candy as a reward. Bring out the bowl after the team completes a big project or after meeting another long-term goal. That way the candy will be viewed as an incentive to work hard, rather than a simple entitlement.

Read thinkin' chick's take.