HR Tech MENA

It'll be another busy month this month with another couple of key international conferences, starting with HR Tech MENA in Dubai followed by ATD ICE in Denver.

I'm particularly looking forward to HR Tech MENA where I'm giving the opening address, focusing on the conference theme of Joining the Digital HR Revolution.

That's partly as this is one of my favourite conference topics these days, and partly because it's great to see digital technologies continuing to take off so well in the region (certainly a step forward from my first experience of social media in Dubai).

It also looks like a good couple of days, with other speakers including:

• Vikas Joshi, Senior Director of HR Transformation, Pepsico

• Christopher De'ath, Group Head of Human Resource, The Kanoo Group, Bahrain

• Faisal Al shanfari, GM - Human Capital, Oman Oil Marketing company, Oman

• Andy Campbell, HCM Strategy Director EMEA, Oracle

• Faisal Al Fahadi, GM of HR and Support Services, Almarai Co, Saudi Arabia

• Mohamed Mesbah, Head of HR, APL, Egypt

• Mona Mohammed Fekri, GM HR, Ducab, UAE

• Fareda Abdulla, HR Consultant, Ministry of Labour, UAE

• Tarik Taman, GM and MD for AMEA, Infor

• Colin Christie, Director of HR Transformation & Change, Du

Do let me know if you'll be there or around.

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing 
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD   
• Contact me to create more value for your business  
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

More on Digital HR

Digital HR has been coming up at HR Tech World again, largely as a result of Josh Bersin's presentation there and the focus on this in Deloitte's Human Capital Trends report.

(I'm not at HR Tech World or HR Tech Conference in Las Vegas again this year but I will be at Tech HR in Gurgaon in August.)

So what is digital HR?  Well I've been posting on this since 2008 and speaking about it since 2011) and have been trying to develop my own understanding of this since then.

I've previously suggested that it is primarily about technologies which help people be more productive, eg social, mobile, wearable and augmented (augmented / virtual reality plus augmented performance / augmented humans).  Social recognition is a great example.

It also includes a big focus on analytics, often through the use of embedded tools which can take the exhaust data produced once face-to-face processes are automated and digitised and produce insight from it.  And because digital systems make it easier to collaborate it includes tools like social network analysis to measure and analyse the extent and quality of collaboration.  Of course increasingly SNAs are being undertaken within or on the back of email systems and enterprise social networks too.

Digital HR doesn't include information technologies like HR or talent management systems as these are about managing people rather than enabling them to manage themselves.  And it doesn't include other exciting developments in technology like robots (especially humanoid robots / androids) and AI.

Appisisation

However the other thing it definitely does include which I didn't refer to previous is apps, increasingly available for download from internal app stores, discussed best in Bersin@Deloitte's Predictions for 2016, rather than Deloitte's HC Trends report.

"As one large company in India recently put it, this new world is focused on building HR “platforms”—infrastructure and technology standards that allow us to rapidly build new solutions, collect data about people and business processes easily, and quickly iterate and improve our employee digital experiences to make them perfect. Think about what happens in the App Store—apps are updated almost weekly. We need to follow this model. 

The best example I can give is the development of an exciting mobile application, Sidekick, by Commonwealth Bank of Australia. I learned about this app roughly 18 months ago and we recently wrote a case study on this platform. This app brings all employees’ HR, collaboration, administration, and support apps to their phones. Within two weeks of rolling out the app, 20,000 employees had actively adopted it. I do not know of a cloud or web-based app which has ever been that successful." 

The future of HR technology is about apps rather than big e-HR systems.  This shift is already well under way with the Big Three vendors SAP, Oracle and Workday and others appisising their existing HR systems.  There's also an increasing number of start-ups producing independent point apps which support small specific bits of functionality more powerfully or creatively than big systems.  I think some of these apps are amazing, however I agreed with the suggestion during HR tech World that employees will get weary of using many unco-ordinated applications.

Better would be a single platform which provides apps and even more importantly the design of bespoke apps.  That's exactly what Salesforce HR provides - core HR functionality (eg Work.com for social performance management), an HR app store and the ability to have an organisation's own 'citizen developers' (teams of HR, IT, managers and employees) using Salesforce's CRM platform capabilities to develop their own bespoke apps.

I think this is a really useful change, particularly as it challenges the existing move, resulting from the move of systems into the cloud, away from the ability to customise systems to simply being able to configure them.  That provides certain benefits but it limits the ability to design best fit approaches which I think needs to be part of the digital age.

So I'm surprised that Salesforce aren't pitching at conferences like HR Tech World as part of a new Big Four (or perhaps along with IBM Kenexa and Watson Talent Insights as a Big Five).

Platformification

Bersin mentioned platforms in terms of technology based environments for development and delivery of apps etc.  The even more important type of platforms is those systems enabling employees and employees, plus others providing knowledge and skills, to connect and focus their work more easily.   A good example is PwC's Talent Exchange which has been in the news over the last few weeks.

However there's also the opportunity to use these platforms internally to enable employees offering skill and others to connect with managers or others offering work. 

McKinsey have been writing about this.  Their suggestion is that digital platforms can put the right person in the right job, identify gaps in skills, help employees as they gain new capabilities, chart career paths, and nurture the development of the next generation of leaders.

"The impact of digital labor platforms and tools is significant and measurable: on average, according to our research, companies can realize an increase of 275 basis points in profit margins. Of course, not every organization will reap the same advantages. The extent of a company’s benefit will depend on the mix of people and skills it needs in its workforce and on its specific operating model. The biggest winners will have a large share of highly skilled workers and a frequently shifting mix of project teams. But even companies with mostly low-skilled workers will benefit, since digital platforms improve the assessment, deployment, and performance of candidates and reduce attrition and the need for costly recruiting. 

Some of the largest gains online labor platforms generate will accrue to professional-services firms. Because they have so many client-facing workers and so few back-office ones, the productivity gains will be reflected mostly in increased output, which we estimate can rise by up to 9 percent, while employee-related costs can fall by up to 7 percent... In global firms, where expertise is dispersed across offices and client work spans industries and functions, digital platforms can help catalog individual expertise at a detailed level. Team-formation tools also take knowledge, interpersonal traits, timing, and geography into account."

These are both exciting, important changes for HR, however the biggest, highest impact and most difficult to implement changes come from within the HR arena itself.  As Josh Bersin suggested at HR Tech World, "digital is a new way of working and behaving - not just tech."


More on this tomorrow...

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Business Partnering and Workforce Technology

I posted a few week's back about Symposium's HR Business Partnering conference this week but wasn't intending to be participating in it this year.  However a slot came up and I stood in to talk about technology enabled business partnering.

It'a topic which was well suited for me as I speak, train, write and consult a lot about this area but I was also able to take some time to think through what I wanted to include in the session during the 7th Drucker Forum in Vienna which focused on Managing in the Digital Age which I attended virtually.

This was the result:

Cutting Edge Technologies for HR Business Partners from Jon Ingham

It's interesting to see the theme about job losses taken forward in Management Today today.  They've used a picture of Robocop who I didn't think about including, but as well as opening up with James Bond, I did close with a picture of Arnie, and finished the presentation with a quick "Hasta La Vista!"

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com 

Humanising HR using Digital Technology - Employee Recognition

I provide more information on creating value HR technology on Workstars blog in my next new post there:

"The Future of HR Technology - Enabling not Controlling  

These new technologies include social collaboration systems, mobile apps, wearables, augmented and virtual reality, games and simulations. Some of the key benefits of these new enabling systems including fun, transparency, collaboration and analytics.

A great example of the new type of HR technology and of the sort of culture which supports it is social recognition. Traditional recognition was very transactional or value for money focused, usually involving limited amounts of recognition and perhaps once a year recognition ceremonies with awards being given to just a small number of employees. More recently this developed into a broader, adding value focus in which managers were responsible for recognising members of their own teams and the focus of recognition became a bit more strategic. 

This shift has now progressed even further with new-style social recognition systems allowing everyone in an organisation to freely express their appreciation of one another and to understand what it is about what they do which other people value. Managers can participate in this process of appreciation but the more fundamental focus is employee to employee, human to human."

More details are on the Workstars blog.

The basic point is that digital technology can help humanise organisations and their HR approaches, putting the H back into HR, by enabling people, freeing them up, to provide more of their potential contribution.

So for example, rather than making people follow automated processes which are designed purely to meet business needs, and then worry about their engagement, it provides people with compelling technology which enables them to do more, and be more engaged in the process.

Social recognition, like Workstars, is a great example of this technology, so do check out their site!

Workstars is a sponsor of my Strategic HCM blog and so you’ll be reading more about them here over the rest of the year.  But in brief:

Workstars' mission is to make your business a better place to work, and crucially, get your business working better. 

Workstars are innovating beyond the very tired, self serving $47 billion reward industry. We are focussed on the future, and the future of employee recognition is social.

A true cloud based business that wraps people services around the market leading employee recognition application, where every line of code is shared by every client, very large or very small.

The first global SME and Enterprise provider to master a free to launch model. Our significant application investment continues to expand our business. We work with HR and when it comes to employee recognition, we are a plug and play innovator.

Workstars bring enterprise level infrastructure and thinking, designed to make managers great and boost engagement across any business.

Also see:

• The benefits of employee voice at work

• The art and science of workplace communication

Enterprise 2.0, Social Business and Digital HR

As I posted yesterday, I think we need to define digital business / digital HR quite carefully, or it risks just becoming a catch-all term for broader transformation, which I think is a shame, as you then miss the specific aspects which digital is about.

I guess one of the most easily confused topics which end up being merged into digital is enterprise 2.0 / social business - often because it's the same people who are concerned with the different aspects, and because of their obvious similarities i.e. that they're both 'not not about the technology.'

For example it's interesting to see the Enterprise 2.0 Summit morphing into Enterprise Digital:

'We have been thinking about the scope of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT for quite some time. For a while now our beloved expert community has been telling us that “Social” has moved on, the “Enterprise 2.0” term is “dead” and that our conference heading doesn’t match the general “zeitgeist” of the current business landscape. 

While the term “social” is called “dead” – the digital transformation of work is in full motion. As part of the bigger picture of developing the “next-generation enterprise model” the re-modeling of work certainly cannot be treated singular – as it needs to fit into a new system of an open culture and a business model based on a networked ecosystem.' 

Now I wouldn't personally say that social is dead - far from it (and I hate the expression anyway) - but again, it depends upon what you mean.  The graphic above is my representation.

Social is one big trend, and a particularly significant one in HR, but one that was never really picked up in Enterprise 2.0 circles and is only now really being developed within HR and the rest of business.  The focus of this is about developing relationships rather than just people, or social capital rather than just human capital, and doing this through everything we have at our disposal within HR, as well as aligned fields, eg workplace design.

Digital is a largely independent shift, more focused on the way we do things, and using the creating value technologies which I referred to yesterday to improve the alignment, productivity, engagement and learning of employees.  This probably has the most relevance outside HR, particularly in terms of connecting employees and customers (although the HR aspects are still important.)

Enterprise 2.0 is (not was) the intersection between the two - the use of digital technologies to achieve social outcomes.

Now as we all know, Enterprise 2.0 never managed to live up to the hype. Altimeter's findings that only 36% of collaboration networks have many people using them absolutely echoes what I see happening in organisations.

However, it doesn't need to be this way - I know from my own experience working in an OD role on a big digital project that enterprise 2.0 systems can be effective, if they're introduced and managed in the right way - i.e. as OD, not as IT (a topic I tried to promote at many Enterprise 2.0 conferences, including the ones in the US, whilst these were still in fashion.)

So is social / enterprise 2.0 really dead?  Only if it's seen as the little bit in the middle of the venn diagramme i.e. the implementation of stand-alone enterprise 2.0 systems without social objectives.  But if it's seen as the connecting point of two critical trends - social relationships, and digital (both still very much alive) then it's still at a very early point in its evolution.

But social and digital can also be implemented separately and independently, and we shouldn't confuse one with the other, even if they're often going to be implemented as part of the same change.

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Digital HR

There's an interesting article in HR Magazine today suggesting that organisations are at risk from a digital delusion which is about seeing "digital as a synonym for technology and therefore about HR systems."

I think the point is a good an important one - 'digital' is hard to understand.  I agree it's not just about technology, but then if it's not, what is it about?

Well I'm going to be blogging on this later on today, but it's worth emphasising that one thing it's not is HR systems!

A few years ago I blogged here about different levels of HR technology based upon the value triangle I use as the basis for a lot of my consulting and training.

Whereas value for money technology focuses on data for HR (HR systems!) and added value systems looks at information and automation for managers, creating value engages and enables employees:

"In creating value, value comes from the organisation’s employees, rather than how these people can be managed to meet existing business needs.  Technology can create value by pointing to particular potentially valuable capabilities, but it is more likely to have this impact by helping employees to increase the value they can provide. 

This is why I’m so interested in social and mobile technologies – they get beyond HR’s system of record and the line manager focused talent management system to actually increase employee contribution.  So for example, a social performance management system can help employees get feedback from the people they work with, to share the reviews with these people and to participate in a review of a whole team.  It helps them take ownership of their own review and hence is likely to have more impact on their performance.  Of course, social technologies aren’t the only way of doing this – for example, I was involved in a self rostering system for train operating company staff a good ten year ago which had much of the same effect.  

You can identify opportunities for creating value from technology by focusing on the people in the organisation – their engagement, capabilities and other aspects of their human and social capital – and thinking about how these capabilities can be extended. 

This is why I’ve been commenting on the need to focus on people and behaviours, not on technologies or tools."

This is the basic insight we need to hold in mind in understanding digital business and digital HR.  Digital business / HR is about technology for people and teams, not to improve management or HR data.  And because it's for people and teams, it immediately becomes more complex than any other areas of technology we'll be more used to, eg HR systems.

The tendency then, as the article suggests, is to assume that digital is about everything we're seeing in today's business world eg fast pace, omi channel, flat / flexible structures etc (from the article) - which of course it can be.  But broadening the definition out this far renders the term to be largely meaningless and reduces the chance that organisations will do anything about it.

So we still need a way of thinking about digital which isn't just about the technology but also doesn't incorporate the whole world of business.


More later...

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

10 reasons your employees aren't using your HR system

I've recently written this white paper for HRZone and Ceridian.

"One of the big issues associated with HR systems in use within organisations today is their poor levels of usage. This whitepaper examines why employees may not be using what may seem to be perfectly adequate systems.

These reasons relate to:

• Issues with the system functionality and whether it really meets the needs of the business, managers and employees, providing them with value in exchange for the time that they spend working on it.

• Issues with usability - often systems do not feel modern or are not being kept up to date, or are not integrating sufficient well with other systems operating in the organisation.

• Issues with the actual use of the system including lack of integration into the organisation and its culture, or the impacts of poor change management, or simply the consequence of the way that HR is perceived within the organisation."

Have a look if you think it might be of interest.

• Consulting   Research  Speaking  Training  Writing
• Strategy  - Talent - Engagement  - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Technology, Analytics and Workforce Liberation

I'm not at HR Tech Europe this year - after chairing the event the last three years and seeing attendees increase from, I think, about 300 to 600 to 1200 to hopefully over 2000 this year it's time to focus on other things for a while.  However I am still very interested in HR technology and look forward to following the tweets.

If I was chairing I'd be commenting about how HR's perfect storm of social, mobile, cloud and analytics has been progressing with more new technologies starting to take hold the role of the four most important starting to shift, with social becoming more about culture (about time too); and mobile developing into a much greater focus on apps; cloud becoming a less important issue (actually I never considered it on the same level as the others being mainly a delivery vehicle rather than changing the nature of what is being delivered).

The one of the four which seemed to have grown in emphasis, becoming a bit of a prima donna at the HR Technology (US) conference, is analytics and it'll be interesting to see whether we have the same take on its growing importance over here.

Despite my articles during HR Technology I personally think analytics will be a big part of the future world of HR (I just don't think it can ever be the major part of that - so a part of the future rather than being THE future.)  I also think analytics is at an interesting junction, where its use could develop into something really useful, or remain in the background.  And to me, this depends on the use we put it towards.

I mentioned in my perfect storm article that an additional tidal surge was developing out of an increasing focus on usability.  This is about making HR technology something which benefits members of our workforce, not just HR or line managers (see my post from the first HR Tech Europe for more on this.)   That same agenda is now coming to analytics too.

In fact we saw some of this at the US conference where several of the tweets and posts addressed the potential for analytics to further reduce the H (human focus or humanity) in HR.

Analytics will always be something we can use to help manage our workforce but the most interesting data on the workforce is now being generated by our employees themselves - from their tweets, their survey responses, their wearable devices etc.  And we can use some of this data too but the more of it we use, particularly if we do that in the normal rather crass way we tend to do these things, our people are going to rebel.  The more we use their data, the less we're going to get.

The only way to resolve this paradox is to think about using this data and our analytical capabilities differently.  We need to focus on giving our interpretation of our employees' data back to our employees so that they can use it to improve their performance.

Take Sociometrics' analysis at Bank of America as a good example - I"m not sure how they went about this but most employers' attempt to give their employees RFID or other devices is going to be met with some friction, and that's likely to be an understatement.

But as wearables become more popular, led most probably by the Apple Watch, people are going become more used to the idea of the Quantified Self and they're going to understand the rationale for the Quantified Organisation.  But they're only going to comfortable being quantified if they're the ones who get to use the quantification.

In fact I think this is the way we're already seeing things developing outside of HR and outside of business, eg I liked this case study of Disney's MagicBands in this week's Computer Weekly:

The MagicBands allow visitors to choose whether they share their personal data. For example, they can connect their card payment details, so they don’t have to carry a wallet around the park.

Parents can also share details such as their child’s name and birthday to make the experience more “magical”. If a child tapped their MagicBand on a reader when queuing to meet a Disney character, the character would then have information on that child, which could be used to personalise the experience.

“Perhaps she’s meeting Alice from Alice in Wonderland, who can then wish her a ‘happy birthday’ and call her by her first name,”

The article makes it clear that Disney is getting benefits from the devices themselves but the system only works because guests are getting the biggest return.

If we remember this then I do think analytics could be the biggest of the four forces on HR.  Of course it still won't be the future of HR and I still have other concerns which I'll come back and address over the next few days.

• Consulting - Research - Speaking - Training - Writing
• Strategy - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

Google Glass / Augmented Employment

Yesterday I got to try on Google Glass at their new London Basecamp.  It was an interesting experience but I escaped with my £1000 unspent.

On a personal basis I don't think I was ever likely to buy a Glass at the moment.  I'm not a geek and generally don't buy-in to new technology until it's fairly well established, the bugs have been ironed out and the functionality enhanced.  It's pretty clear that although Glass is a transformational piece of technology, it's still at a very early point in it's development.  I'll probably wait until I can get full augmented reality rather than the tiny little rectangle above my field of vision, more apps ('Glassware' apparently) eg the ability to identify people through Google + as I'm walking down the street, and higher quality sound and pictures.  Or at least until I can get something like the current functionality at say a tenth of the current Explorer price.  As a glasses wearer there's also the additional costs of prescription frames and John Sumser's experience hasn't helped motivate me to go down this route.

On a broader basis I'm still very interested in what this type of technology may be able to do for business and potentially for HR.  I don't think it will have much of a role in recruitment and certainly not in selection interviewing, though if a recruiter wanted to use one, particularly in a technology oriented sector / role, allowing them to scan through a CV or take a video of the interview, I wouldn't see this as a particular problem as long as they explain this is what they're doing too.  Sourcing may provide a much greater opportunity, but only once the functionality has been quite a bit enhanced.

Learning probably provides a more significant opportunity.  Informal learning has taken great strides forward with the development of Google and other search engines, and with the ability to use these tools via mobile devices.  Google Glass is going to take this to another level yet again.  I increasingly see learning as not just putting stuff into my own head but ensuring I can get the information that I need, whether through the right connections and relationships or my 'external brains' (Evernote and this blog.)  The capability Google Glass will provide us to find and store or reference information is going to be profound - remember Neo learning to fly a helicopter? - well that scenario is coming one step closer today.  It's also going to require a major cultural and behavioural challenge to ensure that people are focusing their learning and not just tiring themselves out through massive cognitive overload.  (There are also the difficult policy issues like do you still ban Glass wearers from accessing Facebook! - no, not really, though I'm sure some companies will try.)

Performance management or at least performance support is probably going to be a bigger opportunity again.  Knowledge workers, and others, should be able to do better knowledge work and this includes HR too.  To some extent the ability to get easier access to HR data and analytics is going to continue the development of HR to become more data and evidence based.  More importantly, to me, might be the opportunity to improve relationships with and between other people.  Picture for example a team meeting where all team members are glassed up and can see the agenda and action notes appearing before their ideas.  That might keep things on track and everyone much more focused on what they need to do as well as their own roles in supporting the team in doing it.

I'm sure there'll be more opportunities we'll discover as we progress with using Glass too.  So although I didn't make a purchase yesterday I'm now even more convinced that this as the future of personal technology.  Walking along looking down towards my iphone, whilst still an amazing step forward from what we used to be able to do even ten years ago, is clearly not an optimal was of receiving and exchanging information.  To be able to get the same details whilst looking at what I'm looking at whilst I'm walking, driving or whatever else I'm doing is clearly the way to go.  I can't see putting all of this on my wrist is going to be a massive improvement from carrying a phone around so I don't think the iwatch and its kind is going to be much of a step change development.  Google Glass is, even if this is bound to be superseded by contact lenses or something at some point.

Our employees are going to be using this.  Maybe not this year but certainly within the next five years everyone is going to be wearing Glass or something like it.  Human augmentation is here.  This is the big issue for HR, not what we can use it for within our own function and activities.  If everyone is wearing Glass what does this mean for our organisations and the way they work?

Currently, I'm still not sure I have much of an answer to this question.  But I do know it's an important question to ask.  HR needs to get on top of this technology and start thinking about how things are going to change.  So you might not want to bother checking your bank balance, but if you're in HR, and in the UK, you need to get yourself down to the London Basecamp and try Glass out.  And I'd be interested in how you get on.

• Consulting - Research - Speaking - Training - Writing
• Strategy - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

#GWC14 - The games HR people should play

I was initially looking forward to this session because it’s got the word HR in the title.  But actually I didn’t learn that much about HR applications for gamification.  (Still, it was great to meet Isidro – ‘the HR gamer’).

However what I really took away from this session was a bit more, a new insight, actually a completely new insight into the connections between games and gamification (something which has once again been a little bit blurred here in Barcelona just as it was in Paris.)

If you’ve read my previous gamification posts you’ll have seen my suggestion for the gaming and gamification process shown above ie that we should start with a gamification process that may or may not end up with a game, and if appropriate with choosing and designing the type of game that’s going to be involved.

Isidro seems to see it differently.

I’ll explain:

For Isidro, gamification is an act of humility – as it’s difficult to be able to say product or service is not reaching its full potential.   Or that we need to increase engagement.

Gamification is useful as there’s a crisis of attention, engagement and meaning (this also applies to marketing and outside the organization)

Isidro plays Pizel Dungeon – where the monsters are more aggressive in the early morning.  This led him to think about whether you can apply the same sort of thinking to e-learning.

His work equivalent of this is Learning Dungeon – setting people challenges using higher level skills and higher requirements.

So the anser is yes, you can apply game mechanics to help engagement and learning.

However two types of obstacles which makes HR functions reluctant to apply gamification.  The first is budget and the second is risk – gamification changes people and the changes you achieve may clash with the corporate culture eg if you don’t really want to empower people.

However, what we really want to create are pervasive games / pervasive gamification which means there are certain features that allow players to go beyond the magic circle and apply the same ways of thinking to their real world.

The purpose of the game above was that Isidro wanted to use games to test the mechanics he wanted to apply in gamification.   They all involve simple mechanics – but how would he apply these mechanics in his own company? – in the business, not just in a game?

Take the Gift Trap game – a simple social empathy game. 

Isidro’s equivalent here is Gift Tasks – the opportunity to become a jedi using the mechanics of gifting.

But this type of mechanics can also be used to help people think about who might be the best person to support a particular customer, ie based upon supporting the drives of :

• Relatedness – group knowledge
• Competence – social certification
• Autonomy - accountability

Or Timeline which is a skill competition game involving a set of cards and you have to order the cards in time order.  The mechanic here is hidden rules.

This translates to Fuzzy Line which is about how people make strategic decisions – whether they want to improve technology, cut the staff, invest in talent programme etc.  And you need to order cards in a prioritized manner.

This builds collaboration skills, the ability to clarify priorities, and develop meaning and information.

Also it makes the rules clear enough to use in communication with the rest of the company.  If a manager knows what activities are priorities, they become part of the decision making process.

Another simple example is example is What If based on the mechanic of the quest.

So the key is that gamification is not game based learning.  But you can test strategies and mechanics at a smaller scale (in a serious game) before scaling up (to the business).

These approaches work because they are based on pull strategies – letting people approach the management rather than pushing things to them; simple implementation; visible results and risk.  And because they build relatedness and competence, trigger more autonomy among players, and help provide meaning.

However two types of obstables which makes HR functions reluctant to apply gamification.  The first is budget and the second is risk – gamification changes people and the changes you achieve may clash with the corporate culture eg if you don’t really want to break down managers’ power and empower all of your people.  Are companies ready?

Apparently there is a database of 1500 games – so review this and choose the best game to apply for your situation.  Focus on the user (although I liked the previous day’s suggestion we call them the player rather than the user)

Ie, my process can be used two ways – from left to right as a way to identify the game (if appropriate) but also right to left, identifying opportunities for gamification based upon all of the possible games.

Neat.  And I wouldn’t knock it’s postential.  But I’d still suggest the more strategic approach based on understanding your people and business needs is going to be the best way forward most of the time.

It does suggest however that we’d benefit from a better appreciation of gaming than most HR practitioners currently have.

See you in the MMORPG?

• Consulting - Research - Speaking - Training - Writing
• Strategy - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com

#GWC14 Past and Future of Gamification

-->

I'm at the Gamification World Congress in Barcelona today.

We began the conference looking at ancient history (above) and the origination of gamification with Nick Pelling, inventor of the term in 2003.

This session wasn't that relevant for my normal HR audience but I found Nick quite charming (eg in terms of being the originator but not the oracle) and loved the start to the conference (protohumans and astronauts) and so still wanted to post.

Nick became interested in gamification when realising that games culture was taking over the world – changing the way people thought about and talked about things.  things like digital downloads, easy to use handsets, immersive interface design (UX), digital content platforms (Apple istore etc).

Also the way that people make games a persuasive business model as well.  Ie you can’t do everything yourself, you need to create a digital platform for people to do things for themselves.

(Personally, I don’t think this is what gamification is about, sorry Nick.)

The big thing since then is social media.  Today it’s the two things together.  Exploring the fuzzy social interface between psychology and programming.  Changing behavior is as much political as it is technological.  Building software to act in constructive social ways.

There’s sometimes a bit of a bad small about gamification – getting people to do things in a funny sort of, gimmicky way.

But there is a lot of happening too.  Things you never think off egKickstarter connecting people who want to give money and people who want to run social projects.  Not about social media but social activity.  AngelList, Alibaba, Match.com.

Don’t think about what it is but what it’s for – joining people together and getting them to do things.  Future opportunities include things like social assisted living – helping young people help older people.

There are till lots of places where people get together awkwardly.

(And that I do agree with – most business organisations come to mind!)

We're supposed to have a session with Brian Burke from Gartner taking us into the future (below) of gamification but he's been delayed - I might add on more here later.

Photo credits Boris Perilli and  BCN Stories (as I'm sitting at the back with the power leads.)

• Consulting - Research - Speaking - Training - Writing
• Strategy - Talent - Engagement - Change and OD 
• Contact me to create more value for your business
• jon [dot] ingham [at] strategic [dash] hcm [dot] com