Does gaming have a role to play in employee engagement?

Citation

Brownhill, I. (2013), "Does gaming have a role to play in employee engagement?", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2013.37212aaa.003

Does gaming have a role to play in employee engagement?

Article Type: Q&A From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 12, Issue 1

Leading industry experts answer your strategic questions

Video games have changed the way we play; they are now set to change working life as well. They are bigger than Hollywood. In November 2011, the game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 grossed US$775 million in just five days – outselling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Hollywood’s biggest-ever blockbuster, by 60 percent. The World of Warcraft gaming franchise has over 12 million subscribers worldwide. Its 2011 release sold 4.7 million copies in one month, a record high for PC game sales.

And that is just two of the best-known games: collectively, gamers spend an estimated three billion hours each week inhabiting parallel worlds, defeating relentless enemies and embarking on epic quests. The gaming demographic is perhaps surprising. The average gamer is 37 years old and 42 percent of gamers are women. They play solo and in teams, using dedicated consoles, PCs, mobile phones and social media such as Facebook.

Online multi-player games are free-form collaborative enterprises. Player teams involve people from all over the world who mostly never meet or speak to each other, and may not even share a language. It is an immersive experience that has shaped the consciousness of a generation – including business people who are now entering the ranks of senior management.

How games foster engagement

What could game techniques offer, in the context of employee engagement? Gaming guru Jane McGonigal (2010) believes that games have enormous potential in the real world because they can help achieve the following:

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  Increase optimism by holding out the possibility of an “epic win.”

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  Help to build a social fabric (multi-player games are collaborative; and they encourage socialization because we like people better when we have played with them).

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  Enable productivity (people like to be busy and are happier when playing a stimulating game than when just “relaxing”).

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  Create meaning – a basic ingredient of any engagement program – by making it possible for participants to take on inspiring missions.

Gaming has many other features that can help to build employee engagement, including the following:

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  The constant feedback participants receive on their progress through scoring mechanisms – contrasted with the annual or semi-annual performance reviews that are standard practice in most companies.

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  Clear success criteria, rewards and, most important of all, public recognition – through the use of achievement badges, Facebook-type “post a comment” features, sport-style leader-boards featuring employee photographs, and reward points as in consumer loyalty programs.

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  Permission to fail, which facilitates learning – a taboo within traditional corporate cultures but acceptable (even celebrated) in a gaming context, for example in war games where players are routinely “killed.”

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  The ability to collect and analyze data on performance enhancing business intelligence software and allowing companies to track progress, see where change is needed and assess ROI.

Enterprise gaming applications

Since games have so many positive features, it is surprising that businesses have only lately woken up to their potential for engaging customers, employees and others on whom their success depends. “Gamification” is the ugly new word that has been coined to describe the use of gaming techniques outside the pure gaming arena. Media and entertainment companies have led the way, using gaming techniques for online product marketing. But during the last two years, interest has spread to so-called “enterprise” applications.

Most are private internal systems, operating below the radar, but some enter the public domain when their originators believe that there is a broader corporate marketing benefit. Here are some public domain examples that we have come across.

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  INNOV8 2.0 is IBM’s Business Process Management (BPM) simulation game. IBM says that the game is designed to provide “a better understanding of how effective BPM impacts an entire business ecosystem.” A 3-D virtual reality game in the mould of Second Life, INNOV8 2.0 allows players to form teams that jointly investigate problems, try out options, get feedback and make decisions. Demos can be viewed on www.ibm.com and YouTube.

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  PlantVille is Siemens’ FarmVille-style game that allows players to learn about the interconnections of manufacturing processes. Players get to manage a bottling, vitamin, or manufacturing plant using key performance indicators such as safety, quality and delivery. They can enter the PlantVille Café, where they can discuss game solutions; and there is the PlantVille Puzzler, where they can test what they have learned. A series of demos is available on YouTube.

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  HEC Montreal’s ERPsim is based on SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software applications. It is a real-time simulation game in which students have to run a business using a SAP ERP system. Teams of five to six players operate a manufacturing company, working with suppliers and customers. Players make plans, operate the production process, sell products and receive payments, becoming familiar with the complete business cycle and the associated information flows. Information and videos are on http://erpsim.hec.ca/ and YouTube.

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  The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions created an innovation game called Idea Street – a collaborative application that includes points, leader boards and a “buzz index.” In its first 18 months, the game attracted 4,500 users and generated 1,400 ideas. Some information about Idea Street is available on Spark, a website about state-sector innovation, www.sparkdev.co.uk/

The future: development of soft skills and behaviors

The first phase of enterprise gamification has focused on core business functions, systems and processes where there is a clear business case and a history of using training and education tools. We predict that in the near future, gamification will be used to develop soft skills and behaviors that are equally important to the business but have an ROI that is more difficult to establish, such the development of leadership, cross-functional and international collaboration, and the cultivation of values and behaviors as part of branding and employee engagement projects.

Ian BrownhillBergHind Joseph.

About the author

Ian Brownhill is managing director and senior consultant at BergHind Joseph. He has over 20 years’ experience of working in research, project management and strategic leadership roles for a range of organizations including Which?, London Transport and the Prince of Wales’ Charities Group. BergHind Joseph is a creative communication agency that uses design, research and strategic thinking across all digital, print and experiential media, to help ambitious businesses build their reputation. Ian Brownhill can be contacted at: ian@berghindjoseph.com