The Talent Game Gamification in HR
The Talent GameGamification in HR
Prepared By Manu Melwin Joy
Assistant ProfessorSCMS School of Technology and Management
Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114
Mail – [email protected]
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• Mickey Mantle, who is widely considered to have been one of the greatest baseball players of all time, once many years ago very aptly remarked, “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.”
Talent Game• Companies are recognizing
the implications of competing intensely in “The Talent Game” to acquire, develop and retain talent. Playing the game requires you to understand the rules and the underlying constraints quickly, and then use them to your advantage.
Talent Game• For instance, poker is based
on rules of probability where the odds against a “straight” are 254 to 1, while a “flush” is 508 to 1. Similarly, in HR, the rules are simple: the odds to source and select the right talent, integrate and retain it while keeping them productive and happy can seem to be unpredictable.
Talent Game• A 2013 report by the
Aberdeen Group noted that organizations face intense pressure to efficiently onboard more new talent to meet company growth objectives (49%), address the shortage of critical skills in the market place (44%) and innovate their new hire programs (29%).
Talent Game• Traditionally, the purpose of the HR
department has been seen by many line managers to find the candidates, qualify them based on an interview, train them using a standard curriculum, answer queries about the organization’s culture and leave it to them to find a way of working productively. After that, HR representatives cross their fingers in hopes the talent will stay and contribute to company growth.
Introducing Gamification• Gamification, like the name
suggests, selectively uses the mechanics that bring out people’s natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism and closure when faced with a real-life situation in the form of a game.
Introducing Gamification• The ways in which we play
these games, and then demonstrate these characteristics, can help line and HR managers gain insight from information about us.
Introducing Gamification• For instance, a software firm
hosts an engaging contest, such as a coding challenge, to assess the candidates with their coding skills. Traditionally, traits such as entrepreneurial spirit, quick decision-making and problem-solving attitude are taken at face value based on answers to interview questions.
Introducing Gamification• A stock brokerage has people
play ‘Ring the Bottle’ as you did possibly when you were a child to assess their achievement orientation. Gamification, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to simulate the working environment and create a selection technique that chooses the best talent.
Introducing Gamification• For example, Marriott Hotels
launched a mobile app that makes candidates virtually perform hotel service industry tasks. This provides insight into how the candidate would approach real work and it helps eliminate those applicants lacking the patience or aptitude for the job.
Introducing Gamification• Today, many companies
provide ready-to-deploy gamification solutions. Often, they can go live in just a few weeks. These modules focus on creating an engaging experience by using badges, points and leaderboards, rather than just visual stimulation as seen in conventional games.
Introducing Gamification• Leaderboards specifically
infuse the feeling of constructive competition, accomplishment and help assess if people network with their peers, which are stronger drivers of behavior than the proverbial “interview.”
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Gamification offers new ways to align candidate behavior with organizational goals. So, instead of telling an employee that he “meets expectations,” it is better to say that he did not clear the second level of the game.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Instead of creating performance ratings, HR representatives can create transparent leaderboards with badges attached to each level, so that an employee knows how he or she is doing in his business unit, region, country or globally.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• If an organization has an
internal social media portal,
the conversations and
chatter around the game
could be redirected to create
employee engagement at
this “virtual water cooler.”
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Many companies have evolved from initially using these platforms as branding vehicles to leveraging them across the entire HR value chain — attracting, engaging, onboarding, training and retaining prospective candidates.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Identifying and targeting talent pools differentiates the organizations that win from the ones that do not. Companies are starting to realize that HR practices based on the “one size fits all” principle prevent the business from improving quality of hire, institutionalize a culture, enhance employee productivity and eventually, grow customer satisfaction.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Gamification applications
are most effective when
they are customized to
various industries and their
specific needs.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• For example, some firms leverage their employee base by creating recruitment ambassadors and lead generators by conducting gamified events across campuses. This achieves all the benefits of crowdsourcing as well as creates an effective brand for the organization.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Gamified new hire programs are
personalized, engaging and often convey
a creativity within an organization.
Instead of sitting through days of
lectures or e-learning modules or
videos, the new employee can play a
game which also provides all the
information he or she needs, connect
them to their peers and even have fun
on his first day of work.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• The cases for using gamification
are numerous and growing. SAP
uses games to educate its
employees on sustainability;
Unilever applies them to training;
Hays deploys them to hire
recruiters and the Khan Academy
uses it for online education.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• According to the Aberdeen
survey, organizations with
gamification in place improve
engagement by 48%, as
compared to 28% with those
who do not, and improve
turnover by 36% as compared to
25%.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Thanks to the advent of social media
and increasing focus on analytics,
gamification offers a plethora of
possibilities. Gartner predicts that by
2014, more than 70% of global
organizations will have at least one
gamified application, which can
range from mastering a specific skill
to improving one’s health.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• However, Gartner also says that
80% of gamified applications will
fail if not designed correctly. A
word of caution here: gamified
modules, based on
performance, work best for
roles that are relatively
repetitive in nature.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• It also works well for roles with
clearly measurable outcomes
and well-defined metrics.
Locating the right talent pool
and engaging specific segments
by customized games promises
to be a pragmatic solution to HR
woes across industries.
Linking Behavior With Organizational Goals
• Gamification is changing the
very DNA of HR. One must
know everything about the
game one is playing and be
the best at it to ensure one’s
life is the best — now is the
time to play.