This paper investigates the effectiveness of a lottery-based bonus reward system in reducing employee absenteeism. Starting in June 2002, a Dutch manufacturing firm held a monthly lottery for workers who had taken no sick leave in the previous three months and had not previously won the lottery. In a given lottery, each of seven contestants whose names were randomly drawn received 75 Euros. The authors find statistically significant differences in absence patterns across groups of workers with different eligibility statuses depending on their attendance records and whether they had previously won. One finding is that absenteeism rose among workers who, having won already, were ineligible for further participation. Nevertheless, and although the reduction in firm-wide absence associated with the lottery drifted from 2.4 percentage points to 1.1 percentage points after seven months, the authors conclude that the lottery was of net benefit to the firm.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University in its journal ILR Review.
Volume (Year): 62 (2009) Issue (Month): 3 (April) Pages: 327-342 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF