Research has proven that surprises and unexpected events boost emotions by 400%, whether positive or negative. Organizations continuously innovate and recreate, rewards and recognitions programs to motivate their employees. The balance of obvious or conventional programs with elements of surprise will increase the motivation levels of employees. After all, productivity of employees depends on employee motivation; so unexpected boosters will help accelerate their motivation levels.
According to Tania Luna, the co-founder of Surprise Industries, surprises send us strong neuro alerts that something is important about this moment, and we have to pay attention to it. At that moment, our cognitive resources are basically hijacked and pulled into action. For some, it will be uncomfortable, for others it will be exciting, because their attention is completely on the moment.
I remember once a newly joined employee explains a moment of surprise when he received a flower bouquet, sent by the organization, at his residence prior to joining. When the bouquet was delivered the entire family was exited and that moment, they get connected with the organization with greater motivation. A small surprise engages the employee with the organization even before they join.
A surprise activates dopamine in our brains, helping us to focus our attention and inspiring us to look at our situation in new ways. Luna and Renninger in their book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected shared four stages of the surprise response:
Off-late, conventional learning systems are paving way for gamified programs, and the surprises involved in gaming, accelerates learning. The games generate anticipation of the unexpected, and the occurrence of unexpected surprises help the learner to focus completely on the concept learned.
It is said that surprises freeze an individual for 1/25th of a second. At that freezing moment, a strong curiosity is developed in the brain to find or learn what is going on. In gamified training program, learning gets accelerated due to increased curiosity to understand the concept behind the subject. As per Luna and Renninger, the next stage involves changing one’s perspective, based on what is found or learnt. This shift towards new perspectives, thoughts or behaviour is the ultimate purpose of a training program. Surprises also motivate one to share the experience with others, this helps in spreading knowledge, increases happiness and further improves morale.
Positive surprises will increase our feelings of happiness and joy and tend to spread the same to people around us through the shift happening within. However, negative surprises will accelerate our feeling of anger, despair, unhappiness etc. That is why we say during performance appraisals that we should not be giving any surprises to the appraisee. Feedback to be given real-time after every performance incident when an employee is with an ‘expected mindset.
Especially in a work environment, managing negative surprises can be much more challenging than positive ones. Giving negative feedback to employees, cutting down benefits, terminating a job, etc will increase unhappiness and sadness. However, Luna and Renninger advise that instead of resisting, being open to uncertainty, learning how to reframe from negative experiences in more positive ways and nurturing stable relationships are all tools we can use to recover from negative surprises.
An environment of less control and supervision will motivate employees to experiment and innovate. In such an environment, failure will also be a cause for celebration and the negative impact can be reduced, making the employee experiment more. Successful innovation brings in surprise elements into the life of employees and increases their happiness and satisfaction multifold.
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Organizations which promote the culture of surprises will have happier and engaged employees.
According to Luna and Renninger “By embracing and engineering surprise you can make our whole world richer, and you can inspire wonder, connection, vulnerability, growth, and creativity.”
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