The Experimenter Series 2.0: Focus Time with Bancolombia
The Experimenter Series is a collection of interviews with people pioneering scientific experiments in large organisations. This year, each conversation will focus on a specific research project.
We met the brilliant behavioural science team at Bancolombia last year when they reached out about our experiment, ‘the Reset’, on restructuring work in the wake of the pandemic with Nationwide Building Society. Bancolombia is one of the biggest financial institutions in Colombia and is present in four other countries in Latin America. We were excited to hear they were planning their own trial and asked them to come back to share what they’d learnt when they were finished.
“We know that time and attention are scarce resources, so focus time could be a very treasured space.”
- Sergio Pelaez
Gus: Hi all! Lovely to speak again. To kick things off, could you introduce yourself and the work you do?
Sergio: Laura is a mathematician and engineer, and has a master’s degree in decision science from LSE. Anita has a background in psychology and behavioural science and has previously worked in the market research department of Bancolombia.
I'm the head of this new unit, but I have been with Bancolombia for 17 years in different departments. in 2016 I also did a masters at LSE in behavioural science, and as there are only a few behavioural science teams yet in Colombia, we are very happy to be pioneering this work!
G: What led you to do this experiment?
S: When you have casual daily conversations with your colleagues, everyone constantly talks about time. They express the feeling that there is not enough time to do their job. When we looked at organisational figures, we saw this reflected in somewhat declining wellbeing data. With this in mind, we had the great fortune of coming across MoreThanNow’s experimental collaboration with Nationwide. We were captured by its simplicity and the results.
We found the Reset intervention to be a very interesting mixture of defaults, social norms, and salience. So we said, let’s do it! We know that time and attention are scarce resources, so focus time could be a very treasured space of having no meetings, and the ability to work individually on planning your week or doing deep work. With this in mind, we just put our heads together and created our experiment.
G: That sounds amazing! To get practical, could you walk me through your experiment?
Laura: Bancolombia teams already had regular check-ins, so in comparison to the MTN x Nationwide experiment, we chose to only do focus time as an intervention without the weekly stand-ups.
Sample: 230 people, diversely selected from divisions.
Duration: 6 weeks
Our research question: Do people schedule focus times in their agendas? And if so, would it benefit them?
We had four treatments:
1. Your manager invites you for focus time.
2. You get an invitation from a general corporate mailbox.
3. You get a message to schedule the focus time yourself.
4. The control group received nothing.
The focus time would be on Monday between 8-9 am, the first hour of the week.
G: And what happened next? What were your findings?
L: We thought the manager would be the most effective treatment, as we feel the way a manager uses their time affects their team. We thought the self-scheduling wouldn’t work, <laugh>. Because 3 months before the experiment, we had the HR team launch communications saying that having the first hour of the week for individual work was a good practice, but almost no one did it. So we thought this treatment was going to be an epic fail <laughs>. However, the findings were surprising!
We measured the impact with a self-report survey. After analysing this data, we also conducted focus groups to dig deeper. Our main findings were:
Across all treatments, 76% of people used focus time at least once every two weeks.
The highest adoption rate came from treatment 1 (manager schedules).
This supported our hypothesis that the manager is highly influential, especially if the manager is invested in focus time and doing it.
The second-highest adoption rate came from treatment 3 (self-scheduling) <laugh>. So we thought maybe people can do it by themselves as well if you remind them correctly.
S: The focus group findings did add some nuance, as people often thought they were doing focus time, but in reality, the intention didn’t translate into action. Often this is because something ‘urgent’ came up, such as a deadline, and this disrupted the focus time. This was a key finding.
L: Another powerful insight from the focus groups was that people wanted to have focus time... That’s why we think the adoption was so high because it connected with a real need.
G: That is great that you got such positive feedback on the initiative in your focus groups. What do these findings mean for your peers? What is the next step?
“The CEO announced that focus time is going to be implemented for all administrative employees. It will be in the same format as the experiment.”
Anita: Two weeks ago, the CEO announced that focus time is going to be implemented for all administrative employees. It will be in the same format as the experiment, so the first hour of Mondays: a good transition between the weekend and the first day of the week.
The launch strategy includes emails, scheduling the focus time on people’s calendars, messages addressed to leaders, and overall we have planned a 12-month communication strategy to help people create the habit. We also created a Q&A on good focus time practices, i.e. what to do if someone interrupts it and tools on how to make good use of the time. We hope to measure if this does improve employee wellbeing and productivity.
G: Wow. Well, just a big compliment to you! Great to see that the experimental findings are now being rolled out and will make a positive impact company-wide. Always great to see behavioural science making a positive impact on the workplace.
L: We are so excited about this happening right now! This is just our first experiment as a new unit, but we hope to have more experiments this year. We know there are various problems surrounding wellbeing and productivity in the workplace, so we are working to address these.
S: Hopefully we'll experiment with MTN. We believe that you guys are a great partner to test things at work. Because when you compare the workplace to other areas of life, it feels like we have been standing still. There has been so much innovation, yet the way we work has stayed stagnant. I think the workplace has been lacking data insights and good design, which we again apply to other domains of life. So, I believe the way MTN is contributing by innovating at the workplace and by utilising behavioural science, is great.
G: It sounds like we’ve got very similar mindsets and visions for the future of work!
“The way we work has stayed stagnant. I think the workplace has been lacking data insights and good design, which we again apply to other domains of life. So, I believe the way MTN is contributing by innovating at the workplace and by utilising behavioural science, is great. ”
Many thanks to the brilliant Sergio, Laura and Anita from Bancolombia for sharing their findings and hooray for conducting their first experiment! They used an RCT to solve a tricky internal wellbeing challenge, and through sharing the findings contributed to the wider research. This is exactly how behavioural science should work, as it allows organisations to build on each other's research, which helps create a better workplace for all. It is great to see them adopt the pioneering, exploratory approach and as they said as well, we hope it inspires many more experiments!