83728An experimental approach to motivation and team dynamics in the wake of Covid-19ClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UK**Who we are** MoreThanNow is a behavioural research practice. We are one of the few commercial organisations conducting randomised controlled experiments in the UK workplace, supporting large organisations such as Transport for London, BT, Ericsson and Novartis make better, fairer decisions about people in recruitment, performance and promotion decisions. **The challenge** The COVID-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves through the HR community, as they respond to the seismic shifts in employee engagement caused by a rapid, and potentially long-term move towards virtual work. The traditional consultancy response has been to leap to answers, gambling with working lives with untested solutions. Our alternative approach - underpinned by empirical research - offers the opportunity to _design and robustly evaluate cultural interventions with experimental evaluation._ Over the past three months, we've developed a diagnostic for self-determined motivation and psychological safety within teams. We are interested in these outcome measures as validated predictors of performance and mental wellbeing and as a means of identifying unique needs across already disadvantaged groups. **The idea - improving motivation and team dynamics using the randomised controlled experiment.** In this proposal, we introduce a novel process of organisational development through an experiment: * We select 100 teams within 2 organisational partners. * We run a baseline diagnostic survey, and randomise our sample into two groups: 1. Control 2. The Manager Capability Programme - a 3-week virtual training intervention. * We run a post-intervention diagnostic, and provide a precise analysis of the impact of our interventions at the team level and between demographic groups (age, gender, ethnicity). **Why is this innovative?** MoreThanNow have been at the forefront of applied behavioural science in the workplace since 2016, and have restricted our experimental work to formal decision-making and single behavioural outcomes. The innovation in this proposal is not the validated diagnostic, nor the interventions, but the experimental approach to evaluation. Testing culture-change interventions using the randomised controlled experimentation is innovative, novel, and starkly different from the advisory methods served by the employee engagement market. The output of the project will be a validated approach to organisational development in response to COVID-19\. **Why is this a good investment?** The employee engagement market is estimated at $73.4bn and the leadership development market at $336bn. Yet, the traditional service model fails to accurately isolate the impact of cultural interventions on meaningful outcomes. COVID-19 offers a much-needed opportunity for radical disruption. MoreThanNow already has an established reputation and route to market in applied behavioural science - this proof of concept will allow us to develop that position by entering the vast employee engagement market. Our aim is to create a process innovation that addresses the employee engagement problems posed by COVID-19\. We'll help organisations support their teams and accelerate their economic recovery; using the Sustainable Innovation Funding to grow others as we grow our business in parallel.