Engaged Agents & Satisfied Customers: Why Target, Microsoft, Others Use Gamification

A decade of downsizing, technological change and economic uncertainty has spawned a cynical, aloof and exhausted workforce. Many studies have shown that most firms engage only 30%-40% of their employees at any given time. Unfortunately, using traditional methods to spur on employees will likely disappoint. Research shows that between 60% and 80% of all change management, employee engagement and extrinsic reward strategies fail to trigger long-term change and improved business results. Despite this poor prognosis, executives should not give up hope. Newly emerging Gamification strategies can help.

Gamification is the use of gaming principles and techniques in a business environment to drive attitudinal and behavioral change over the long term. Many dynamic companies like Microsoft, Target, SAP, Deloitte, and Nike are already using these innovative strategies to improve operational performance, spark innovation, foster higher levels of collaboration and catalyze long term behavioral change. Moreover, some Gamification platforms can produce a rich and steady stream of data that can be used to pinpoint employee engagement trends faster and with more accuracy.

Fundamentally, Gamification leverages the power and appeal of games to turn disengaged individuals into active and productive participants. Games rely on intrinsic drivers like fun, mastery, pride and recognition to increase engagement, instead of extrinsic, binary rewards and punishment. Playing games enables a person to experience a brand or change behaviorally, rather than simply hearing one-off messages in a passive way. Consistently living this experience – both in an on and off-line environment, can indelibly imprint a memory of the desired change on the individual. A wide variety of tasks in medium to large organizations can be "gamified" include boring, repetitive operations like quality assurance, participation in training programs, compliance with corporate procedures, involvement in wellness or "green" programs and knowledge sharing.

Playing games is a natural human activity that traces its roots back to prehistoric times. Hundreds of millions of people of all ages regularly play on & offline games around the world including 42% of Americans, 52% of UK residents and 66% of Germans (source: 2011 National Gaming survey). Many of the principles behind Gamification come from the 40-year-old, $70B-billion video game industry, a sector that knows something about hooking and keeping an individual’s interest and getting him or her to do things he or she may be reluctant to do.

All Gamification programs integrate some core elements. They fuse stories, missions, incentives, and real-time feedback into a clearly defined process or activity. As in a video game, stories and missions can be anything that captivates and catalyzes a person’s interest over an extended period. Incentives can range from simple leaderboards, ranks and badges to the creation of virtual currencies that can be traded or cashed in.

There are numerous examples of Gamification in the workplace that are achieving significant business results, while boosting engagement.

Microsoft – Driving operational performance

The company faced a testing challenge releasing Windows 7 in multiple countries and languages. It had to make sure the dialogue boxes worked well in every language. This manual process required motivated and conscientious testers who could consistently perform a mundane but important task without getting bored. Recognizing the potential of using games to improve their quality-assurance performance, management established a simple competition for employee teams across different geographies. The objective of the game was to find as many errors as possible in the localized dialogue boxes. Interestingly, testers were given no financial rewards. They were motivated by the excitement of finding the most coding errors, being good corporate citizens and being the most successful office on the published leaderboard.

The results were impressive. The employees reviewed approximately 500,000 dialogue boxes, and found hundreds of bugs and errors in the localization that hadn’t been discovered in the original translation. Microsoft is committed to Gamification. According to Ross Smith, director of test, Windows Core Security at Microsoft, "Productivity games and virtual worlds are 21st century business processes, not gimmicks, something we’ve seen for years at Microsoft."

Target – Increasing check out speed

Last year, this world-class retailer wanted to improve cashier throughput and customer service so they made the checkout process more like a game. Each time cashiers are checking out a patron, a red light tells them they were too slow to scan an item, or a green light shows they were on target. The cashier is then provided with a real time score - based on the transaction’s speed and accuracy over multiple transactions– so they can reflect how they are doing.

This simple adaptation of Gamification principles has proven to be very effective at reducing check out times, increasing cashier efficiency, and enhancing employee morale (by providing rapid feedback and a fun experience).

Global Pharmaceutical firm– Improved alignment and knowledge transfer

A Canadian subsidiary wanted to increase internal alignment and understanding around their drug commercialization process. A secondary objective was to explore ways to streamline this process so as to get to market sooner. Previous corporate attempts had failed due to the ineffectiveness of "push" style communication initiatives and employee apathy. To break through, we developed a unique commercialization game based on the mechanics of popular games like Monopoly and Life. All middle and senior managers were organized in teams and required to play the game at an offsite. Armed with deeper process knowledge, they were then asked brainstorm ways to improve workflows.

The exercise produced some amazing results. Awareness and understanding of the firm’s commercialization process went up over 350%. More importantly, some of the brainstormed ideas led to significant time improvements in the go-to-market process. The Company decided to roll this game out to more than a dozen other international subsidiaries.

Making it happen

HR leaders looking to introduce Gamification should understand some key notions. Gamification is more than rewarding behaviors. It is about connecting employees to a higher-level purpose and creating a road map to individual as well as business growth. To successfully drive behavior, programs need to offer unique goals and targets to employees and provide feedback and intrinsic rewards to increase the effectiveness of each one. Just as vital is having a appealing mission and game design that is capable of quickly onboarding employees and sustaining participation throughout the life of the program.

Winning Gamification programs artfully combine four pillars:

1.Business strategy – Gamification initiatives are tightly coupled to core business strategies and metrics.

2.Motivational science – Successful games leverage key learnings of behavioral and social psychology such as the importance of continuous feedback, fun, competition and social recognition.

3.Game lessons – Popular games (especially of the video variety) have been shown to trigger the release of brain endorphins, which lead to higher levels of blissful happiness.

4.Technology – A variety of technology companies have deployed enterprise-level platforms that can run different games, track results and synthesize the learnings.

Employees just want recognition, fun and meaning in their jobs. Gamification enables managers to efficiently deliver on these needs in a variety of use cases right across the organization. Happy, game-playing workers bring compelling business payoffs on the operational and customer sides of the business: higher productivity & collaboration, more innovation and stronger morale, without the pain of change management initiatives and the cost of extrinsic rewards. Not surprisingly, Gamification strategies will continue to enjoy rapid market adoption.

Mitchell Osak is managing director of Quanta Consulting Inc. Quanta has delivered a variety of strategy and organizational transformation consulting and educational solutions to global Fortune 1,000 organizations. Mitchell can be reached at mosak@quantaconsulting.com