Good news, nine-to-fivers! Your working lives could soon get an exciting makeover due to the innovative rise of occupational gamification. By placing a focus on challenge and achievement, the gamification of work is a strategy designed to motivate employees to perform better on the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how does it work? Let\u2019s take the example of Bluewolf, a global business consulting firm based in New York. Beginning in 2012, Bluewolf created a programme called #GoingSocial in order to incentivise employees and enhance their commitment to building the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now called PRIME, the programme makes heavy use of gamification techniques: Bluewolf\u2019s employees get points for internal and external networking, for publishing a post on Bluewolf\u2019s blog, and for sharing content on LinkedIn and Twitter. These points and rewards \u2013 which range from T-shirts to lunch with the CEO \u2013 are then presented on an individual employee\u2019s \u201cPack Profile,\u201d which can be accessed on the programme.
All of this sounds like a blast, right? For employers, it\u2019s certainly got advantages. According to Alain Dehaze, CEO of the Adecco Group, the gamification of work has given recruiters a new way to educate and train workers. \u201cGamification is a tool to leverage the impact of education and training,\u201d says Dehaze. \u201cYou learn faster through a game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adecco is also incorporating gamification concepts into its recruiting efforts. It recently introduced a \u201cCEO for one month\u201d programme. Essentially a high-powered management trainee selection process and internship programme, the global challenge selects 47 finalists from a pool of over 200,000 applicants from around the world. The final 47 work alongside the company\u2019s country CEOs; the final ten candidates compete at a management \u201cboot camp\u201d for a spot shadowing Dehaze himself as global CEO for a month. (The finalist also earns a USD $10,000 \u201csalary.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unconventional recruiting approach \u2013 which involves team-building exercises for candidates along with elimination rounds \u2013 is a way to set the Adecco Group\u2019s recruitment process apart using gamification techniques. It\u2019s an appropriate approach for an HR firm that wants to stand out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dehaze\u2019s arguments ring true to Jamaican physicist Dominic Mills-Howell, a postdoctoral student at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy and Leader of Tomorrow whose essay for the St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award was entitled \u201cArtificial Intelligence, Gamification, Culture and the Amistics of Human Development\u201d. \u201cThe main idea behind the gamification of work is to accelerate the learning process\u201d, says Mills-Howell.
Gamification, Mills-Howell says, can be very beneficial to the employee. For example, a video-game style leader board is a way to publicly recognise an employee\u2019s achievements. This therefore motivates people to always perform their best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dominic Geissler, M.A Candidate in Business Innovation and Design Thinking at the University of St. Gallen, is also optimistic about the gamification of work. This is because the phenomenon may allow us to re-define what work means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNowadays, work means income-generating activities. In the future, work will be about pursuing your leisure activities. On the side, you\u2019ll get additional basic income,\u201d says Geissler. Gamification of work promises a double advantage in the sense that it might enable individuals to really have fun with their jobs \u2013 and also get paid for enjoying themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, gamifying a workplace is not a straightforward process. \u201cTo have long-term success, you have to really think about how specifically you use game mechanics in order to achieve goals,\u201d says Geissler. Game-design experts must create gamification techniques that are actually going to motivate the employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Geissler argues, for example, that just relying on a leader board is a problem: After an employee gets to the top, they may not be interested in gamification anymore. In contrast, an employee who is struggling to compete with their peers on the leader board may feel \u201cdisengaged\u201d with the concept of gamification. Companies need to ensure that they are always coming up with something new and creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To Stefan Kie\u00dfling, M.A. candidate in Philosophy and Business Administration at Copenhagen Business School, gamifying a workplace is comparable to giving employees a kind of drug. In other words, it sometimes verges on the immoral: The most powerful gamification techniques have the dangerous capacity to really get into an individual\u2019s mind. \u201cGamification can cause employees to become very competitive with one another and this can therefore lead to individuals feeling distressed,\u201d says Kie\u00dfling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because of these factors, Kie\u00dfling agrees with Geissler and argues that one must be very careful when designing the elements of a gamification platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So is gamification a blessing or a curse? For Bluewolf, the #GoingSocial programme was definitely a blessing: Ten months after its initial launch, its blog traffic tripled, and visits to its website from social media platforms rose 68 percent. The approach was so successful Bluewolf expanded and continued it. The programme is now known as PRIME; Bluewolf executives claim it\u2019s boosted staff retention, project volume and revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And at Adecco? Applications for their innovative recruiting programme are up, and it has become an annual event. The future of work, it seems, may be fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Good news, nine-to-fivers! Your working lives could soon get an exciting makeover due to the innovative rise of occupational gamification. By placing a focus on challenge and achievement, the gamification of work is a strategy designed to motivate employees to perform better on the job. So how does it work? Let\u2019s take the example of Bluewolf, a global business consulting firm based in New York. Beginning in 2012, Bluewolf created a programme called #GoingSocial in order to incentivise employees and enhance their commitment to building the company. Now called PRIME, the programme makes heavy use of gamification techniques: Bluewolf\u2019s employees get…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"INSIGHTS<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"wordpress@weitblick-online.ch","url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/author\/wordpressweitblick-online-ch\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","authors":[{"term_id":100,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kalendra-withanaarachchi","display_name":"Kalendra Withanaarachchi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gravatars\/762b22de4bf1bf3924204e9b02554eaa","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3018,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions\/3018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}