Social copying: the art of workplace behaviour change

When used effectively across departments and organisations, social copying can have far-reaching consequences for building positive behaviours at work - from empathetic leadership to health and safety measures. It’s also an important driver in workplaces for positive cultural change and can have a strong impact on the long-term success of a business. What’s more, organisations can see results fairly quickly, busting the myth that cultural change at work takes longer.

But first, what is social copying? In essence, it's the phenomenon of social mimicry, where we subconsciously mirror other peoples’ behaviour. It can present as ‘negative’ behaviour such as dropping litter at a music festival, or positive behaviour like copying team members following safety procedures at work . We do it in the community, in social groups and in the workplace.

Why do we copy others, especially their ‘negative’ behaviour?

We’re herd animals by nature. We have a deep psychological need to fit in, as evidenced by research. But this desire to fit in is far more complex than a desire to be the same as everyone else. When we perceive a group of people as 'similar to us' we are more likely to copy them - but this group has to resonate with our values.  We copy people we trust and, the closer we feel to people, the more we trust them. The people we’re most likely to copy are those we see as influential: the ringleaders, people in positions of power, or those with the most social influence in a particular setting. People can often change their minds about a behaviour, adopting it until something changes their minds back again, as a sort of cognitive dissonance. There are many past examples of this, with some more extreme than others, including smoking in public, drink driving, and genocide.

The importance of belief in social copying

While people may start copying behaviour subconsciously, if they don’t believe in the change, the process will be slower and may not be upheld long term. So it’s important you present a ‘value’ to the behaviour you want introduced. Will it, for example, help them on an individual level, or help others, or the environment? Change for change’s sake is unlikely to be compelling enough for people to adapt their behaviours. Each time social behaviour has evolved successfully, it’s been because social copying techniques have been used to full effect, like phasing out the habit of not wearing seatbelts or drink driving. These practices became socially unacceptable over time and few people now get behind the wheel and forget (or actively choose) not to wear a seat belt, or drive under the influence.

Social copying in the workplace

In organisational psychology, much of the research is based on social and family psychology. As workplaces are widely acknowledged to function as a subset of society, most models based on broader society work well for workplace settings. Behaviour can be predicted and changed in a social setting but, to do so effectively, individual behaviour also needs to be influenced. When influential people positively change their behaviour, others are more likely to emulate them because they look up to them. Influential people are also more likely to be heeded over peoples’ usual contemporaries. These influential people aren’t necessarily workplace leaders, but just someone others look up to.

Good and bad behaviour

So, if you want to make positive change in your workplace, find the ‘influencers’, they’re the ones that drive positive or negative change. Getting influential members of a team to greet new starters or opening conversations about mental health in the workplace, for example, will get others copying their behaviour, thereby building motivation, performance and psychological safety. On the flipside, if influential people have unhealthy working practices like skipping lunch or working very long hours, others are likely to copy them. Over a long term, this can lead to a burnt-out team, reducing overall productivity, and increasing absenteeism and employee turnover.

In business, there is often a vicious cycle where people work beyond their contracted hours. While they risk burnout, they often also get promoted - which makes them influential - as others see the praise they receive from leadership. This then encourages a culture of staying late where employees compete and from here, conditions can worsen. As a result of this, team performance often drops. Those working long hours struggle to complete quality tasks, or fail to respond and interact effectively with other team members. We also know that employees who feel overworked or undervalued by such a culture are more likely to leave. This not only causes retention problems, but also risks damaging the likelihood of attracting good talent if word gets out.

Examples of successful social copying programmes at work

Onboarding: One way to ensure positive behaviours stick is to onboard new employees into ‘good’ practices. This is better done face-to-face rather than online or observing others. Such practices also need to play out in real time. A culture of ‘eating lunch away from our desks’ only works if people see others doing it.

Company culture: If you want to create a company culture of respect, for example, it can be moulded using atomic behaviour, with attributable, visible and binary factors (see later). Respect can be boiled down to smaller key behaviours like turning up to meetings on time. You only need two to three behaviours to underpin the culture and shift the social norm. And you don't need a long period of time to change things for the better, either. Even in large companies, changing things at department level can prove powerful, especially where people are more likely to be influenced by their immediate team and managers.

Changing a toxic work culture quickly

It's a myth that it takes time to change a toxic culture. When this happens, it’s usually because it’s tackled without the right steps and the right level of attention from leadership. You can make changes in the relative short term, especially if you focus on just one element.

First, identify the good traits you want to see. Be specific, such as: safety, openness, inclusivity, creativity and trust. Then set out a plan using the ‘Three factors of social copying’ (see below). Once you’ve decided what you want to change and why, make sure you get buy-in from the people who are influential to your staff to help make the change a success. The reasons as to why behavioural change is necessary must be especially clear for leadership and teams. For example, if inspiring trust in teams is important, what is the suspected impact? This could be anything from wellbeing, through to staff retention, improved performance, and sales effectiveness. The more tangible these outcomes, the better.

It helps to show evidence of tangible results from other companies, such as case studies to convince influential people within your business. Make sure the messages resonate on an individual level too; ‘more profits’ is unlikely to matter to warehouse operatives unless a bonus in their payslips is on offer.

Start small with behavioural changes

Once you’ve got the messaging right, look at seeding and spreading small sets of behaviour as, with something radical, people are less likely to comply. The advantage with starting small is that, simply put, you can measure results with metrics.

In order to work, behaviour needs to conform to a certain set of rules:

• It's attributable to an individual: ‘Safety’ in itself is not a behaviour. You need to identify and propagate the ‘people behaviour’ associated with safety, like ‘wear PPE correctly at all times’.

• The action needs to be visible: The change is not in how people think, although that does, of course, help. It must be observable: ‘Wear protective gear from point X ‘in a factory serves as a good example.

• The behaviour must be binary: You do it or you don’t. It's all or nothing. You can’t 'half-do' the behaviour, much like you can’t 'half-wear' headphones!

With this in place, your next step is to spread the social copying behaviour throughout the organisation with a clear communication plan. It’s important you measure the results and maintain momentum, otherwise people become disengaged. What’s more, a poor attempt at changed behaviour can have unintended consequences, like breaking trust or apathy towards future change initiatives. Note that just as good behaviours can spread in a short time, so too can toxic culture, especially during times of intense change where a new senior leader joins the executive team, a cost-of-living crisis, or during a period of high employee turnover.

Social copying: Three factors for planned behaviour

1. Personal beliefs

If you ask most people, “What’s your view on littering?”, their behavioural belief will most likely be that it’s bad. You may argue that this is obvious; littering harms the environment, makes a space look untidy, and it really doesn't have many upsides. Relatively newer government laws though, such as the smoking ban introduced in 2007, may take more work to come round to (for smokers), as they may be harder to mould because they were not imprinted from an early age.

2. Normative beliefs

People look to others to decide how to behave and to see what everyone else doing. For example, they might not drop litter normally but if they go to a music festival and see everyone else doing it, they are more likely to mimic this behaviour. When your individual view conflicts with the normative belief, then cognitive dissonance can occur. People usually let the normative belief override their own personal belief, especially if there is no personal consequence for them, like a fine. This is especially true if they believe their reputation is under threat from influential people they look up to. They will only go against this normative belief if they hold very strong personal views that they are willing to fight for. Some people are, of course, more pliable than others when it comes to social pressures or norms.

3. Control beliefs

Control beliefs are achieved through positive consequences like a reward mechanism or negative consequences such as punishments. These positively reinforce ‘good’ behaviour or deter ‘poor’ behaviour. For example, music festivals might reward people for bringing cups back in return for free drinks. Clear messaging is very important to influence and create a shift in individuals’ beliefs. It needs to resonate with them by highlighting the social benefits of compliance: impact on their health or the planet, or their social standing. Make it matter to them personally.

The role of diversity in social conformity

You might need different influential people depending on the diversity of the group. If all the influential people carrying out the behaviour are from one culture, the social copying may not take hold in another group. Identifying and convincing these influential people is therefore a first priority. After this, you need these influential people to audibly challenge normative beliefs. Finally, add in the positive or negative consequences of compliance.

Make it easy

The easier it is to comply, the more likely it is that people will do it. Litter prevention works best when there are more bins available. Interactive bins or colourful bins can also help children participate in positive behaviour. Encouraging and shifting behaviour at an early age embeds it at a cultural level and, over time, fewer negative measures such as litter wardens are needed because the new behaviours become automated and natural for us.

Hybrid working and social disconnection

Hybrid working has brought many benefits to employees and businesses, but it is creating social disconnection in other ways, which is why organisations are trying to encourage more people back into the office. When people work remotely and visit the office less, there are fewer opportunities for them to observe and copy each other. This causes organisations a lot of concern around sustaining company culture, especially when they want to introduce multiple sites or time differences.

Social copying is a powerful tool; something a lot of organisations unwittingly engage in naturally. With awareness of social copying as a concept, you may be more equipped to observe it in action, and even better, leverage it and use it to your full advantage for the betterment of your organisational culture (and beyond!).