In my last post around gamification, I briefly went into what it is and some of my initial thoughts on it.
Since then, I came across a powerful list of gamification case studies with ROI stats, some of which are eye-popping. Objective Logistics, for example, gamified their employees with behavioral rewards and saw profit margin increase 40%. Ford Motors in Canada used gamification in eLearning and saw a 417% increase in learning portal use. That one, along with some of the others, got me thinking.
How can gamification be applied to L&D/training and hiring/talent acquisition?
L&D/Training
This one often seems overlooked; years ago at a happy hour, I met a long-time L&D employee who lamented that, during any revenue erosion period, her job was among the first to go. She had been through eight employers in 12 years as a result of companies under-committing to L&D. This is a shame, of course: one of the major differentiators of “good” companies vs. “great” companies is simply more effective and consistent training.
In the Ford example above, their sales and marketing teams needed to learn new features and price points of cars -- so Ford created leaderboards, send push messages, and gave away prizes at different points in the learning cycle. You can see the drastic increase in portal usage above.
Deloitte has also brought gamification into L&D, using it with employees and clients alike. Their system is similar -- badges and “missions” that employees/clients embark on, with potential rewards. They’ve seen increased engagement as well.
Their Manager of Innovation, James Sanders, makes an interesting point in that article: no matter how great, intuitive, or excellent-user-experience a learning system is, it will never be a person’s first choice when they have free time. So to make it work, it almost must have that reward construct, because that will lead to the kind of push-pull feelings we have about our cell phones. (Which we check an average of 46 times/day.)
Hiring/Talent Acquisition
There are different approaches here, spanning multiple business needs.
If you’re looking for good people and want to let them compete against each other, consider an idea like Google’s Code Jam. On face, this is just a contest for $50,000, but Google uses it to identify top talent. Plus: it’s inherently gamified, so the best people get stoked to return and compete in it. They tell like-minded friends, and Google is building out their talent pipeline just by launching a contest online. There are lots of things people will tell you to copy from Google that an SMB could never afford to do, but this isn’t one of those things.
What about brand awareness? Create a game like Domino’s Pizza Mogul. This is basically a way for kids to earn money and come up with new pizza ideas, but the bigger idea was brand awareness. Domino’s was aware most of the players of this game were younger, and younger-aged people tend to be more likely to become a driver or employee of Domino’s. So now, the brand is top of mind when they need a job -- and it seems like a fun, innovative place to work.
Marriott and PWC have used games through Facebook to simulate job aspects for candidates, then reach out to top potentials.
There are ways to do this internally, too: you can have a leaderboard and badges for most hires (although that’s not always the greatest metric), shortest time to fill, highest-quality hires (as determined by review scores after a few years), most discussions with hiring manager (while some would view this negatively, it actually implies more context on role was being conveyed), and other metrics. Now, ideally, the internal HR hiring/recruiting team is more motivated to excel.
The bottom line
Gamification has benefits, although in the SMB space it might be a bit harder. To do it right you’ll likely need a technology partner and platform, which can get costly -- and you’ll need excellent internal communications so that everyone understands what this is, how to use it, and why it matters. With SMB clients I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this as a high-value add, but as you scale, it has the potential to be something you consider.
The other crucial thing to remember is something a lot of companies are struggling with in general these days: there’s a “virtual” world (where tech lives and platforms are, and gamification happens) and a “real” world (where people need to interact and communicate and provide clarity on projects). Even the best -- the absolute best -- gamification platform would still require a degree of human touch. If you remove that, it won’t succeed.