[solatic]

First of all, not every company wishes to incentivize this behavior. Peopleware reminds us that phone calls and other real-time interruptions are big drags on productivity for knowledge workers who need to concentrate. Every time somebody has a verbal conversation to illuminate something unclear, is a time that it wasn't recorded into some kind of documentation that will help future people with the same confusion.

But say you do wish to incentivize that. You can, if you can track the medium of exchange. Take everyone's phone records, reward short conversations, but disincentivize conversations that are too short ("sorry, not now, bye") or too long (social chatting in place of productivity). If you can cost-effectively put it through some kind of ML classifier that could tell you if the conversations were helpful internal support, personal, etc., then all the better. Translate that into some kind of score and factor it into whatever formula that produces personal KPIs.

Not saying it's easy. Just saying it's possible, and it's realistic if you have a team whose full-time job is to come up with these kinds of solutions.

[Angostura]

Sorry, I;'m not doing this on the phone. Bob and I are doing this over a quick coffee break, scribbing on the back of a napkin.

[solatic]

Do you seriously want to incentivize productive behavior during people's work breaks? Because that doesn't sound to me like something you want to incentivize (risk of burnout etc.).

[Angostura]

No, I'm taking a quick break from my "work" to help a valued colleague solve a problem informally in a way that actually adds more value to the organisation than if I had been sat at my desk. I enjoy the human interaction, its good for my sense of wellbeing. My colleague has his stress levels reduced. We learn a bit about each other's jobs in those 15 minutes and a product is delivered a week earlier than it would otherwise have been.