More and more companies are moving away from traditional compliance methods to encourage employees to behave with integrity and are using methods and models derived from the behavioural sciences. Organisations are using so-called nudges and other tools to bring about significant changes in the behaviour of their employees through low-cost adjustments. The term “nudging” encompasses methods used to influence people’s behaviour without significantly changing economic incentives or resorting to commandments and prohibitions. Rather, the target group is nudged towards the desired behaviour.

A recent article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) illustrates with several illustrative examples how this “nudging” is executed in practice, how companies from the financial sector and especially companies in Switzerland apply these methods and how they implement them in their companies.