‘Out of the Box’ Applications of Games at Work

If you are a senior executive or HR, who thinks games and gamification are not for your organization, here is a list of 10 companies that have promoted games for different aspects of work, and benefited tremendously from it!

1. Samsung created the Samsung Nation for employee/dealer motivation

Traditionally, the method of employee motivation was incentives, bonuses, and awards. These methods more often than not lead to competition, biases, and dissatisfaction within teams.

Samsung came up with an innovative solution to boost employee motivation through collaboration. Through a Game called Samsung Nation! The company rewards its users with badges as they progress through different levels of achievement. The badges and levels are given after users create content, watch product videos, review products, engage with their community and other activities.

The Result — Samsung has an unbiased method to encourage participation, gauge, and reward-motivated employees and dealers.

2. Unilever uses game-based assessments for entry-level hiring

In 2016, Unilever overhauled its hiring methodology to include Game-based assessments. Games based on psychometric assessments assess the ‘true self’ of an applicant versus the ‘best foot forward self’ presented by applicants in resumes and interviews.

The Result — Unilever has the most socioeconomically diverse group of employees to date. The number of entry-level applications and the colleges represented has doubled within just one year!

3. Bluewolf’s uses games for boosting internal and external communication

For any organization, its employees are its brand ambassadors. Employees endorsing the company on social media can be the best possible boost for a company’s brand.

‘Going Social’ was a game created by Bluewolf to encourage employees to share information internally and on social media.

The Result — Employee productivity increased by 25%

4. M&M for marketing

In 2013, a simple and inexpensive game based on eye-spy logic launched by M&M became a hit on social media.

The game was part of a social media marketing campaign for M&M’s pretzels. Users were asked to find a pretzel amongst M&M’s candies.

The Result — M&M’s Facebook page had over 25,000 new likes, 6,000 shares, and 10,000 comments.

5. Autodesk for new customer acquisition

Autodesk, a software provider, gamified its trial version.

Users could gain points on completing a ‘mission and compare their scores within the trial version’s leaderboard.

The Result — Trial usage rose by 40% and purchases by 10%.

6. French Postal Services for employee orientation and retention

French postal service was losing 1 out of 4 new recruits within the first few weeks of joining. So, they gamified the job orientation for all selected candidates.

Their gamification platform Jeu Facteur Academy helps selected candidates get a real feel of the job by walking them through a routine day as a postal carrier before they formally join.

The Result- dropout rates dropped from 25% to 8%!

7. Deloitte for Leadership Training

Deloitte had built a leadership training module for senior executives. The senior executives started the modules but very few completed it.

Deloitte gamified the training modules to include badges, leaderboards, and status.

The Result — The average uptake of the training curriculum increased by 46.6% and the time to complete the training decreased by 50%.

8. Engine Yard to improve its Knowledge Base

Engine Yard, a Cloud app management platform created a Knowledge Base to encourage community troubleshooting, but employees and customers were not contributing substantially.

A gamified version of Knowledge Base was implemented which rewarded contributors for completing customer surveys or reporting bugs.

The Result - Engine Yard saw a 20% drop in customer complaint tickets and a 40% improvement in customer support response time.

9. Virtusa uses game-based assessments for hiring candidates and appraisal decisions

Virtusa felt the need to identify the gap between its employee’s true potential and performance. The talent leadership was keen to know the differentiating qualities between high and low performers to facilitate effective learning and development programs. So, based on the job roles of their employees in the company, relevant traits were measured like cognitive flexibility, deductive reasoning, analytical thinking, selective attention, etc. through game-based assessments.

The Result — PerspectAI has done these assessments for over 700 employees. The reports generated are now being used to assess potential new recruits, support the appraisal system, and for training and development

10. Maruti Suzuki uses game-based assessments for employee training and development

Maruti Suzuki has recently used games to identify their employees’ strengths and developmental needs. To better understand their employees, traits like attention, information processing, and mind-body coordination were measured. Based on the results generated by PerspectAI, recommendations were given on the employees’ training needs when compared within their verticals and with other verticals in all manufacturing facilities. PerspectAI has conducted these game-based assessments for over 700 employees in 17 verticals of Maruti Suzuki.

The Result — Maruti Suzuki gained a deeper understanding of the potential and abilities of its employees. The analysis and the training needs recommended by PerspectAI helped Maruti Suzuki with their training and development processes.

Hope these examples have convinced you that ‘Games can make Work better in many ways in your organization too.

To know more about Game-based Assessments, visit PerspectAI here.