We were brought in by a large pharmaceutical company who needed help in changing the culture of their patient call center. This organization had a product that required patients to perform daily injections for two full years. Patients could sign up for a free support service that would make monthly calls to them to see how they were doing. The company wanted to move the Patient Support Specialist (PSS) from focusing solely on customer service “check-ins” to becoming adherence coaches. The company realized that patients' needed more help to be able to build routines and rituals to help them adhere to their treatment plan.

We started the process by conducting patient focus groups to understand the patient journey, mindset and challenges that they faced. We then conducted a series of interviews with call center specialists to understand how they interacted with the patients and their perception of their role. Using behavioral science and insights from these dialogs, we designed a new patient interaction protocol, developed new PSS training, and built an entirely new Call Guide for the Patient Support Specialists. We moved the reactionary conversations that the PSS had with the patient, to conversations that were proactive and based on behavioral insights in order to help their patients build positive habits and routines, anticipate roadblocks to treatment adherence, construct support networks, and provide on-going motivation to succeed.

Impact: The company introduced new training this spring to great acclaim. The PSSs were excited about their new role and embraced the new interactions that they had with the patients. The Brand Leader stated that this was “the most energy” she had ever seen in a training session with these employees.

A fast growing, multibillion dollar company had more than doubled in size over the prior five years. As such, the hands–on, individualized and informal process for developing incentive compensation plans was no longer sufficient to handle the growing needs, multiple business unit demands, and various nuances of the company. Company leadership brought in The Lantern Group to help develop an incentive compensation philosophy that would provide a consistent framework for how incentives would be designed and implemented across the different sales divisions.

We began the process by conducting a series of stakeholder interviews with senior leadership and the field to better understand where the pain points were. Using a behavioral inquiry method, we were able to assess some of the root feelings and emotions that people had about their incentives. We developed and implemented a full field survey to gain some baseline measures for how people felt about specific elements including, but not limited to:

• Pay spread
• Incentive safety net
• Equity across business units
• Qualitative versus quantitative measures
• Mix of reward types

We analyzed this information, bringing a behavioral perspective to how the different components would impact motivation. We facilitated a series of three half-day sessions with the President, Senior Sales VPs, and the CHRO to craft a comprehensive IC philosophy and process that implemented in 2015.

Impact: The new IC philosophy was a touchstone that the IC team, Brand, and IC Governance team uses when they develop any variable reward component. The IC Philosophy has been instrumental in how the organization builds and implements both their trimesterly plan as well as any short–term contests. The director of IC has stated that the IC Philosophy has “put everyone on the same page so we are much more effective on gaining alignment and focus for our programs.”

In 2012, Eli Lilly realized that its incentive plans had not kept pace with the organizational strategy that it was employing. Additionally, senior management had been intrigued about if they could incorporate behavioral economic principles into their incentives to make them more effective. That realization resulted in them putting together a task force to examine the intersection of rewards and behavioral economics. After looking at a number of consultants, Lilly brought in The Lantern Group to help them build their new incentive framework using insights from behavioral science. Specifically, we:

• Helped them introduce the 4-Drive Model of Employee Motivation to the organization, starting with a training session for the president and key executives. The model was used as a guide for our reward and recognition development efforts.
• Helped them design and implement a behavioral audit of all of their variable reward programs to understand how they fit with the new strategic focus, understand what motivational drives the programs were satisfying and identified gaps where Lilly could leverage greater motivation and increased strategic focus.
  
• Interviewed over 50-stakeholders from across the organization to identify key motivational and behavioral factors that impacted the total rewards environment and alignment with new strategy.
• Through a series of off–site design meetings, The Lantern Group, in partnership with the design team, crafted a new framework for Lilly's Total Rewards that supported and enhanced the organizational strategy, leveraged the motivational power of all 4–Drives, and incorporated behavioral economic principles to drive the right behaviors.

A large pharmaceutical manufacturer approached our team to help them increase the understanding and buy-in of their incentive plans across the organization's three business units and 16 sales forces. Organizational surveys had shown that only 45% of the field felt that they understood their incentive plans. In designing an effective solution, our challenges included the following:

• Each of the 16 sales forces had independent, unique plans. The plan communications needed to maintain consistency across the organization, yet allow for the unique elements of each plan.
• The client requested a limited frequency of communication. We needed to ensure the maximum effectiveness of each element and ensure that we applied behavioral insights appropriately.

The Lantern Group created a branded IC campaign that addressed the key issues of comprehension, consistency and efficiency. For each of the 16 sales forces, we produced three communication elements that leveraged behavioral science principles and complimented each other:

• Professional Electronic Compensation Books provided an easy-to-use reference for each how the plan worked. Taking into account behavioral principles such as framing and cognitive load, we ensured that the guides were simple, highly graphical, and highlighted the incentives opportunity and positive team impact. We tested messaging with field interviews and designed guidebooks that the field actually read – using strategic callouts and personal antidotes to help drive engagement.
• Webinar Workshops provided the detailed plan elements and rationale for the plan. The workshops were delivered by sales management and the IC team to the sales representatives in a webinar format. Each workshop included video from the company President, interactive visuals, and a leader’s guide to help sales management walk through the info. The Lantern Group developed the PPT, the video, and the talking point script for this and ensured that the message was on target and highly motivational.
• Quick Reference Guides (QRGs) provided sales representatives with an info-graphic style overview of their IC plan. These QRGs visually represented the key components of the plan and highlighted how the plans aligned with the overall corporate mission.

Impact: After three–years, 84% of the field indicated that they understood their incentive plan — an increase of almost 40% points. Six–years later, after achieving forecast each year, we continue to work in depth with this organization. The Director of Incentive Compensation stated, “The way that we communicate now is world class. I am convinced that we've achieved forecast each of these past six–years, even through some challenging times, partly due to the impact that the communication had on the field's motivation.”

Lilly USA's fleet safety record was one of the worst in the industry. Recognizing this was an issue, Lilly's senior executives made improving Lilly's fleet safety as one of their top priorities. Their stated goal is to become one of the safest professional fleets in the United States by 2020. Lilly knew that making investments to ensure that Lilly's field employees arrive home safely every day does more than just save the company money; it shows that they value their employees as people with families and dreams that Lilly is helping to protect.

As such, Lilly needed to develop out a new Fleet Safety program, change their driving rules, and modify their processes to address this issue. While much of this work was focused on technology enhancements and policy updates; Lilly realized that ultimately, it is the behavior of their employees when they are driving that has the biggest impact on reducing accidents.

That is when they brought in The Lantern Group to help.

From prior work with behavioral economics, Lilly knew that employees are human beings who do not always behave rationally, but are subject to a myriad of emotions, biases, and over–confidence when it comes to how they behave behind the wheel. Accepting that Fleet Safety is a human behavior issue, they had us help them better understand the human side of their fleet safety initiatives.

As part of this work, The Lantern Group provided Lilly with insights and recommendations on:

• How technology upgrades, including mobile device blockage, hands–free navigation, and telematics, were perceived by employees. Specifically, assisting Lilly in the development, launch and implementation of employee processes and training enhanced the correct technology usage and reduced employee workarounds and cheats.
• Developing communication standards using behavioral principles to drive the right behaviors.
• Identifying behavioral science principals that were applied to Lilly's Fleet policy to ensure that they would have the greatest impact on employee behavior.
• Conducting research to identify cultural and social cues that impacted driving behaviors and how the organization can modify, reframe, reduce, or change those cues to enhance safety.
• Consulting with Lilly on using both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators and how to best implement those to improve driver performance. For instance, we implemented an incentive based on the loss aversion principle, where people lost their satellite radio if they had over 5 MVI points on their record.

Impact: Collision rates are down by over 1.5% since last year, with bigger gains expected based on the changes that we have made. With the average collision costing over $25,000, the savings that the organization will realize is huge — not to mention the impact on employees lives.