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Over the last decade they word “gamification” as taking on a new significance. Instead of being a simple buzzword to be bandied around in corporate headquarters, it's evolved into a methodology that is in use across all business platforms. For the last 100 years employees have been extrinsically motivated using, essentially, the carrot and the stick. But the 21st century paradigm offers more possibilities to look into intrinsic motivation. And this is where gamification comes into play.
Though extrinsic motivation can still play a role within HR, today's recruits are driven more by purpose, autonomy, and other factors related to the design principles of working in the modern era. Today we have seen that all businesses have benefited hugely from using gamification techniques within the human resources departments. By adopting these principles, the company is able to increase the interest and enjoyment of employees, as the gamification element tends to inspire both creativity and efficiency. To that end, we can definitely say that gamification is finally being recognised as adding real value to the whole organisational process.
Unfortunately there are still many backward-looking businesses that are struggling to understand the whole gamification concept. But for forward-looking businesses, they have seen the impact that invocation can have on both the daily work requirement, as well as employees' general behaviour and wellbeing. When it comes to engaging employees, particularly in HR related activities, then gamification appears to be the way to go.
How Is Gamification Being Used In HR?
There are a number of ways in which gamification can be used to engage employees. You can look upon it as a mechanism for feedback, fun, collaboration, and also for stimulating progress. These mechanisms are essentially related to the human drivers referred to previously. These being autonomy, mastery, purpose, and relatedness.
When you go back a few decades, you'll see that there was a certain arrogance about employers. They assumed that by simply offering a job that would be enough to attract good recruits. But today's millennials and zoomers are looking for something more, and it's by using gamification that companies now are being able to attract the attention of good candidates, as well as raising the interest profile of their job openings in the jobs marketplace. So in some ways the shoe is now on the other foot, with recruits being the ones making the choices, as opposed to the employers. Once the improvement process has begun, then gamification can also be used to encourage would-be employees to stay motivated and engaged during the whole ongoing process.
Examples Of Gamification In HR Departments In Industry
Marriott For Recruitment
Marriott International, the huge hotel chain, invented a game called “My Marriott Hotel.'' This allows would-be candidates the opportunity to run their own virtual hotel. It's actually a miniature hotel, and the recruits need to train employees, serve guests, purchase inventory, and even design their own restaurant. The game centres around customer services and the players win or lose points depending on the standards they maintain. To be pedantic, this isn’t really gamification, as it's essentially a business game or a simulation. The difference being that with HR business games you are essentially simulating the same environment to train employees. But we're going to call it gamification for today’s article, simply because we believe it's part of a larger process towards the same results.
Cisco Using Gamification For Education And Development
Cisco began their efforts with gamification on social media training as a means of encouraging and building the skill sets for their employees. Originally the marketing department was using Twitter to service their customers. Sales were using LinkedIn to reach potential customers. So it wasn't long before HR employees started using the same platform in their search for candidates. Thanks to this process they now include the provision of new skills which are measured and simulated.
Deloitte Has Gamification For Onboarding
This accountancy company decided it was better to make use of gamification for their onboarding process. As a result, new recruits form teams and learn about compliance, ethics, privacy, and also online procedures. They can also ask preset questions to any team, allowing for anyone to answer. This open approach allows all members to be team players and come up with original and insightful ideas of their own. The whole point behind this is to create a strong sense of team loyalty and belonging, even before the employees have their first day at the office.
Talking about offices, the company has also created a video game which involves a virtual office. This begins at the airport where the employee may choose their destination from Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong. The recruit or employee can then fly to that city and find their way to the local office. What's more, they'll be able to converse and interact with the local employees, thereby getting a better sense of the office culture in that country.
Accenture For Creating A Culture Of Collaboration
In order to better understand management objectives, Accenture has started using gamification. It all begins by earning your first points when you complete your online profile and begin to share content. By using gamification, employees are encouraged to share knowledge by blogging and publishing reusable documents. The general idea here is to try to implant the idea into affecting the employees actual behaviour. This is in order for the company to succeed as everyone needs to work together, by not being afraid of sharing. As of today, over 30 different activities are being tracked. This has led to reduced operating cost, as well as increased productivity. Employees say that they are happier and feel as though their innovative ideas are being accepted.
A Belgium Hospital For New Employee Training
The hospital in Sint-Truiden has set aside a “faulty room” for new trainees to practice the basic elementary tasks they will be needing in their new job. It's a real patient room in which there are intentional errors being made all the time. Are the nurse clothes fitted correctly? Are the beds situated in the optimum position? Are all safety instructions being met? The gamification part is that they have 10 minutes to find 20 mistakes which are situated in the room. Not only must they discover these mistakes, but also they must explain why they are so. Depending on how they do, feedback will be given.
NTT Developed A Game For Identifying Leadership Qualities
NTT developed a game to test leadership qualities. They christened it “The Samurai.” First comes a range of questions after which HD participants must join a guest to whom they will demonstrate as to how good they are at managing others. The company uses this as a form of testing to discover who has the best leadership qualities within those recruits. It is also used to give valuable insights into those employees who need extra help in management departments.
Phoenix Software Use gamification For Attracting New Candidates
Phoenix Software went all out and set up an escape room game. Candidates are paired up with a long-term employee, who will get to know them, and after watching how they play have a better idea of who the right candidate might be. Thanks to the system being totally open, candidates don't even need to send in a CV. They just have to register online if they wish to take part. The recruitment agency who devised this escape room have now launched a mobile app version called the “Mobile Talent Room”. The game can be used to test the competencies of both existing staff and applicants.
Gamification Can Be A Powerful Tool, In The Right Hands
One thing you should keep in mind about using gamification, is that it's not a simple one size fits all. On the whole, the experience may be a good one but unless the training material is good and there is qualitative input, then the use of gamification may not work at all. Another factor is that any form of gamification is going to need a considerable amount of time and energy. It's not a case of just setting it up and letting it run by itself.
Finally, you need to be absolutely crystal clear about what you're hoping to achieve by installing gamification techniques within your HR department. What specific behaviour do you want to target? You should then set up your whole gamification experience with these answers in mind.
