#GamifyHR HR / Recruitment Gamification Case Studies

Here are the case studies from Day 1 of Fleming Europe's Gamification in HR Summit. These all focus on Recruitment (we looked at a broad range of HR processes on day 2, and focused more deeply on learning in day 3). 

They are also all really serious gaming case studies vs gamification ones (possibly with it being harder to inject true gamification into recruitment than it is into internal HR processes as you can't change the way people are doing what they're doing as they're not actually doing anything yet!?)

Maersk Drilling - Quest for Oil

Another recruitment game supporting Maersk's employer brand and attracting talent.

Maersk Drilling want to double the size of the company - requiring 3000 people, doubling the size of the company, in five years, and in a well paid, competitive sector.

Anja Andersen and Frederik Tukk described the development of their recruiting site from a traditional page of vacancies where people spent less than a minute on average.  They didn't want to go into social media as their management team thought this was unprofessional and for kids but eventually launched a Facebook page - for telling stories, not posting jobs.  This game them a broader mix of channels to promote the game.

The game = Quest for Oil.

They also pushed the game to key eduction influencers as something they would need to introduce the energy industry to their students.  And communications were led by their CEO giving live interviews etc around the world.

The game has been downloaded by 350,000 people.

 











Transport Sector Eduction Fund in Denmark - Cargo Dynasty

Magnus Kobke's fund spends 1m per year improving situation for 60,000 truck drivers, attracting young people to the industry (where the average age is 49) and helping them develop their skills.

It's an interesting case study compared to PwC and BNP Paribas given the generally low level of skills in the sector and its poor image - including its delays and accidents but also 'people don't want to use their hands in their career - they want to use their heads'.  Therefore 32% of young people drop out before they graduate.

In 2010, one of their Directors (aged 62) came up with the idea of creating a game.  They invited people from the branches and together designed a board game which was then developed into an online, multiplayer game over the next three and a half years.  It's available at cargodynasty.com or via apps (downloadable in Denmark) or see the video.

Groups of students play against each other, competing to build the best, largest and most profitable haulage company.  There are four main scenarios - the cargo hub (a bit like Sims City), map, a freight exchange and some mini games for amusement.

So in the cargo hub you can 'pimp your truck' and take on more employees, but this requires a bigger office and costs so it needs to be matched with revenues.  In the example Magnus showed us, HR's offices had also grown, and you can hire and fire people, train them etc (though the HRD hasn't yet got a helipad like the MD has.)

Players can earn certificates which are the same ones you need as part of a proper apprenticeship.

In the freight area you get to plan routes to transport goods and you find out if you can make money - ie if the revenues outweigh the costs of the transportation.  You can buy more trucks but your drivers need the required certificates.

Each round of the same last 20 minutes, by students in different places.   At the end of the round you can see who has earned more money and a teacher helps extracts learnings out of the game.

There's also a national championship for transportation  apprenticeships, workshops and webinars etc to raise interest.

 







BNP Paribas - ACE Manager

Deborah Lasry manages the ACE Manager business game which started in 2009 and is in its 6th edition, improving the quality of its graphics every year.  Its aim is to increase brand awareness and recruit top talent.  Deborah leads the project and has cut its costs to a third of what it had been.

It is for students from all of the world and is played by teams of three people - locally or internationally.  Its based on a story set in a banking environment in universe city where students have to find resources and solve cases (mergers, IPOs etc, gathering information and answering financial questions).

This helps them develop their skills and make links with others globally.

There is a prize of up to E6000 but also the offer of internships worldwide.

They've been promoting the game through campus visits in China and Africa.

The game reaches over 20,000 students per year (so next year will have over 200k alumni / ambassadors) and the average time on spite during the competition is 51 minutes.  They hire 20 students per year from the programme.

PwC Hungary - Multipoly

Noemi Biro from PwC in Hungary explained that this started in 2010 and is now in its third year, being tweated every year.  The programme focuses on attracting young talent, demonstrating the firm's employer brand and differentiating it from the other big 4.  It was initially rejected for cost (formally) and inexperience (informally).

Initial costs were high but ongoing expenditure is fairly low.  And once they got the go ahead it took 4 months to develop the system.

Multipoly a 3D online game simulating a 1 year long internship programme within 12 days.  They start with an entry exam based on a video about PwC.  If they pass, they create their profile which enables them to track measures based upon the competencies which inform the game - knowledge, reliability, loyalty and networking.

Players get 20 activity points per day on mandatory exercises and optional situations depending on the points they would like to increase.  They get set different exercises in different parts of the virtual offices.  Some of these cover spots, social responsibility etc, not just about accountancy, so candidates get a true picture of the complexity which makes up employment with the firm.

People log in using their Facebook account so you can see more information about them, and achievements get pasted on their Facebook wall.  The achievements also get converted to real prizes including a trip for two to New York.

Over 1000 people participated last year.  Applications have increased from 1600 to over 3000 per year over the three years.  It works because it provide competition, learning and social connection.

Questions

• Is this gamification or is it just using a serious game? (although this doesn't really matter - both can be useful)
• Is it fun?  I can see it helps to provide understanding more effectively than a printed or even online brochure etc.  But will it inspire and motivate people to join?
• Does the prize distort focus?  Wouldn't a prize of a job work better than a trip to New York? (though this year the game winner did get recruited too.)

 

 












We also had a look at Boehringer Ingelheim's Professor Syrum Facebook game.  See this presentation.

 

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#GamifyHR - Gamification in HR

I'm at Fleming Europe's Gamification in HR Summit in Paris.  I'm here as someone who is interested in the agenda but hasn't yet made up my mind about the extent of benefits for most companies, so I'm hoping the next three days will help me make my mind up.

Our first session is from Mario Herger who defines gamification of design elements in non-game contexts to solve problems, change behaviours and engage, teach, measure and entertain audiences:

• Engage - eg fill in timesheet faster - eg sad/happy face - silly - but led to increase 20 to 100% completion in consultancy company
• Teach - help people to learn better - eg SAP Sales Roadwarrior
• Entertain - Paul the Octopus prediction of sports
• Measure - eg whether someone fits into organisation

Gamification design elements include things like nice graphic design like Candy Crush, avatars representing other employees / players, badges, leaderboards...

Examples include:

• Basic things like recruitment - eg Formaposte, French postal workers had a problem with 25% of new employees leaving in their first work - they created a serious game which reduced attrition to 8%.
• And learning - help people see how they're developing skills, making compliance training into a story
• Or more interestingly, talent management - enabling a manager to get stock option on a new employee, if they do well the higher their bonus will be, so even if moving to a new team I still keep the same option (like Empire Avenue).

Roman Rackwits suggested gamification is becoming more important as we move from the industrial age and its focus on what we already know (crystalised intelligence) to the knowledge society and focus on problem solving (fluid intelligence).  We can develop this by seeking novelty, challenging yourself, thinking creatively, doing things the hard way and networking.

And because of low levels of engagement.  I'm not totally convinced  by gamification but I do think low levels of engagement around the world are a disgrace - and we need to use any new tools at our disposal to do things differently.  But I also agree with Mario that it's important we don't reduce intrinsic motivation by getting people too focused on hitting targets / receiving rewards / beating the competition.

Tim Ackermann at Parexel in Germany who have 16000 employees and are looking at 3000 clinical testers so have some significant challenges for recruitment.   However even in this technical area, they focus on Roman's fluid intelligence as nearly half of what someone knows will be out of date within the next five years.  They're developing a gamification approach seeing recruiting as a game taking people in talent communities formed years ahead of recruitment through levels via onboarding, learning and mentoring eg level 1 - visit the company, level 2 - work with real materials, level 3 - introduction of a company's riddle etc.

More from the conference later.  And I'm here for the next three days (and then the Gamification World Congress in Barcelona next Friday) so if you have questions you want me to respond to, or even ask the speakers, do comment here (or you can use the hashtag #gamifyhr on Twitter).

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Valuing Your Talent is dead - long live VyT?

I’ve posted previously on the CIPD’sattempt to restart moves to improve external reporting on people management,and potentially to try and include people on the balance sheet.

The attempt was launched at the CIPD conference in November and was met with a largely critical response.  My own challenges were that firstly capitalising people on the balance sheet can’t and shouldn’t be done, and secondly that nothing material had changed from previous failed attempts at this, and I couldn’t see why this would result in anything different.

Since then I’ve played my own small part in helping the attempt to fail.  There are a few different reasons for this.  Firstly I think a botched approach to measurement and reporting will be worse than no more reporting at all, and there were definite signs of botching going on with this.  Secondly I think the potential benefits are pretty small.  Yes, businesses do need to value their talent more than they do, but they can value without more measurement, and more measurement will have very little impact on how much they value.  Thirdly, the CIPD wanted to create a movement, but they launched their attempt in a way which acted as a brake rather than an accelerator.  I reacted in a way that most people will to something that is being imposed rather than involving me in its development, and probably significantly more positively than this.  (I’ll be posting on how you do form a movement within the next few days.)

So I’m actually very pleased the attempt has failed.  I suggested issuing deathnotices on the RSA’s site for VyT a couple of weeks ago and this week HRMagazine declared that Vyt has scrapped its ambition to capitalise staff.  It will now ‘focus instead on helping organisations be more sustainable and maximise their workforce potential.’  Fine – who can argue against that?

By the way, HR Magazine also suggests that VyT faced passionate criticism from practitioners with ethical concerns or those who feel jaded based on similar attempts in the past.  Now I’ll own up to passionate criticism and I’m generally fairly passionate in most of what I do.  And I do think the history of attempts to improve external reporting are important to build upon.  But I don’t think I’m jaded, and don’t see a connection to ethical concerns.  My central objection has simply been about the capitalisation idea, and concern about the potential of making firms do something which isn’t just ‘currently difficult’ but is actually conceptually impossible.  I think that’s a very valid and important challenge to make!

My secondary objection was that the CIPD’s framework (shown above) was too rigid and that prescribed standards would take companies away from a strategic approach.  This strikes me as a valid and important concern as well.  And in fact, this challenge does also seem to have been taken on board:

“Although details have not been finalised, the framework will be modelled on an organisation’s value chain, a common approach in finance (see chart). This organises human capital data into ‘buckets’ across the four phases of a business model: inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes. An input could be retention; an activity might be recruitment; an output could be workforce capability; and an outcome might be productivity.”

So VyT may not quite be dead, but it’s certainly been lobotomized and is now a much less dangerous beast.  In fact we’re left with something smaller and but broader which may actually be quite useful.

There are still a couple of important changes before we end up with the right framework though.  Take another look at the paragraph from HR Magazine I’ve included above before I explain -

First, we have to realise that the value chain isn’t just a common approach in finance – it’s a common approach in business, including HR.  VyT are talking about exactly the same value chain as Kaplan and Norton in their strategy map.  It’s just that we’ve repurposed it for our own use.  See this comparison from my Strategic HCM book:

Secondly,  we should see the four parts of the value chain / strategy map as steps not buckets.  That’s why today, Kaplan and Norton’s strategy map is the more popular tool than the balanced business scorecard.  The sense of flow between the four perspectives is important as it’s this that provides the ability to differentiate lead and lag indicators.

And it’s the linking of objectives and measures between the steps in the strategy map which is important, so the measures shouldn’t be predefined standards as this would detract from the linking process, but should come from the strategy (and this isn’t just about how to measure value but also refers to where metrics should be applied.)

Finally, we really do need to relabel VyT’s outputs as outcomes and outcomes and business impacts, as in my diagram above.  The third step in the value chain consists of outcomes not outputs firstly because these aren’t just results but they really are something vital and important.  And secondly, the fourth step isn’t just outcomes resulting from outputs, but a completely new set of results based upon a complex set of business processes as well as the outcomes which HR provides.  Referring to people and cultural value like workforce capability as mere outputs rather than outcomes detracts rather than contributes to the way talent is valued.

If VyT makes these additional small changes then it will end up with the HCM Value Chain I described in my 2005 book, Strategic Human Capital Management: Creating Value through People.

Which I’m still convinced is the best framework for measurement and reporting.

It's just a shame the CIPD didn’t come straight to me about this.  Two years agoI told the CIPD that Peter should be their CEO but they still shelled out for a head hunter to ‘find’ him.  Now Peter’s paid out for Lancaster University to do completely unnecessary research when he could just have paid £25 for my book!

But at least it looks as if they’re going to get the, or something close to the, right answer.

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#BDW14 - Quantified Self

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This theme was kicked off by an interesting session from Ruth Thomson at Cambridge Consultants.

The quantified self is about measuring yourself, and incorporating measures into your daily life in order to gain actionable information (not just data) to help make you fitter, better, whatever it is that you’re interested in.

So in the fitness area, systems can help you improve your performance or technique – measuring your steps or checking your pulse rate and whether you’re in the right exercise zone – plus the community aspects allowing you to compare your performance with someone else’s, or providing data to a coach etc.

And in wellbeing, systems can monitor your posture, sleep, chronic conditions etc.  These are supported through a range of technologies ranging from smart socks helping with posture to an intelligent pill that knows when you’ve taken it!

Technology availability is improving rapidly – there are many small, lightweight, cheap and high performing systems – wearable or around us in the environment, often on our phones – though this isn’t always ideal – eg for the bathroom or swimming pool (I wear a FitBit Flex, and link this to my digital weighing scales and iphone / ipad app). 

Therefore most consuumers already have part of the system in their pocket and quantified self systems can piggy back on this existing infrastructure (eg Nike Fuel Bands potentially being replaced by Apple’s iwatch).

Cloud storage also means consumers have somewhere to store all of this data and provide secure access to the right people at the right time.

But most often today is about single devices communicating in silos to the cloud, not really connected devices communicating intuitively with each other, gathering data about what you need and the environment and allowing smart inferences on what you want or need.

Again, we’re at the cusp of this – and we’re getting mass attention, not mass adoption.  But I do think this is something HR should be paying attention to.

In later sessions, Pravin Paratey at Affectv talked about the role that sensors and devices are playing in the growth of big data as these become incorporated into our lives.    The internet is becoming an extension of our lives, a medium for creating and interacting rather than just somewhere to find information.  And a consequence of this is that our every action is logged.  Businesses need to:

• Ask the right questions (what business challenges are you trying to solve?)
• Look at how they can augment their existing data – via internal and external sources
• Move to statistical vs rules based approaches to cut through big noise
• Accept approximate vs exact data
• Understand the difference between big and fast
• Manage data security and build trust – and consumers need to understand that our data is out there.

Splunk provided some examples of developing insights from unstructured data for e-commerce.

• Tesco – understanding what you’re doing on their website – and linking to other information eg on the weather - so they can push other products to you
• Dominoes selecting the email offers they send you
• Self service car analysis.

Big Step discussed using Splunk to extract data from social media feeds.

These are good examples but I didn’t like the suggestion that we need to change the process of collect – prepare – ask to put more focus onto ask.  In my view, we really need to move ‘ask’ right to the front of this.  The power of correlation may be replacing the value of causality but at least in strategic vs operational aspects of this we still need a level of intelligence in our analysis.

Path Intelligence talked about some of their successes in retail eg in shopping habits which is difficult to get otherwise as other data sources face difficulties in understanding whether there are multiple people or just one person coming back multiple times.  They’ve also linked these to other data sources such as labour planning to ensure workforce scheduling better meets customer demands.

It was good see an HR application of big data coming out finally.  But actually there was a big lack of business functionality throughout much of the day.  I  personally think this focus on the technology might be one reason big data is failing to take off in the way many people have predicted.

The other problem is peoples' push back against providing their data to firms - which Ernst & Young have been articulating too.

But I still think the HR version of this, the quantified organisation, using wearable technologies and other devices, will happen.  And of course, it's already happening in places, eg I think this case study on Bank of America and Sociometric Solutions is quite compelling.

But as always with technology, it's organisational culture rather than the technology that's key.   And it'll be interesting to see whether we end up with QS being used in a controlling sort of way, a bit like existing work in Amazon's warehouses, or in a more empowering style, using the information to help employees make better choices about their actions.

So once again, QS needs to be an HR strategy rather than an IT one.

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#BDW14 Internet of Things

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One of the key themes of the big data week conference is the internet of things.  We’ve had an introductory session from Dave Starling, Chief Architect at Picsolve which seemed interesting from a technical perspective but was pretty simple from a functional one – really just about combining photos and videos across different leisure attractions, like Harry Potter World,  and providing and combining fairly small amounts of data (eg 2-300 data points) and doing some fairly interesting analysis eg providing screamometer leaderboards, supported by gamification.  Not as interesting as the Disney case study though.
 

I found the session by Edward Bryan from IBM on Smart Cities more interesting – and there’s an obvious link here to the Smarter Workforce.

“The system is a teacher.  The city is gaining all sorts of insights about day-to-day operations and emergency situations that were never before possible – simply because data is now available.”

Karen Lomas from Intel suggested the challenge in smart cities isn’t just about the data but also how you change behavior – so the behavioural science behind big data is equally as important. 

One important aspect of this is tailoring the insight which is developed to many stakeholders with multiple needs.

And once again, Karen also suggested that we’re at an inflection point.

In the afternoon, we heard from Maarten Ectors at Canonical / Ubuntu that IOT will benefit all sectors - on your bodies,  your devices etc.

But we’re not there yet – we’re currently at the internet of isolated things.  Your grandmother isn’t asking for a FitBit for Christmas.  And we need more advances in technology first – IP6 so that devices can have their own addresses; Bluetooth 4 etc; higher bandwidth and more secure networks etc.  It need crowd sourcing and open source fits well in this environment.  Gamification helps as well.

But the opportunities are immense - sensors briefing your FitBit that you’re feeling a bit stressed and getting your home controller to turn down the lights etc when you get back.

James Robinson from CTO OpenSignal  spoke about the mobile as the measure of all things (vs De Vinci’s man as the measure all of things.)  Mobile sensors beat human sensors and are getting better, and in fact mobile is already better than you might think – increasingly containing GPS, camera, fingerprint scanner, heart rate sensor, pressure sensor, environmental humidity sensor etc.

People are imprecise, have low accuracy, a limited range, can’t measure magnetism, humidity etc and are really bad at logging and storing information.

Chips can now collect sensor information without waking up your phones and this efficiency will increase opportunities from mobile a thousand-fold.  And we’re finding out more about how we can put our phones’ sensors to interesting uses, eg the battery temperature sensor provided to keep phone from over heating can be repurposed to measure outside temperature; accelerometers can be used for unique identification of people etc.

Siraj Tahir from RainTech suggested that too many projects capture more data than they need to, and tend to fail.  We need to focus on objectives not on objects (yes!).

Again, speakers seemed to agree that we’re in a ‘phase of early maturation’.

And the HR applications of IOT?  Well one is to push us to move our focus, not just onto the contingent workforce but the whole new agenda around robots and devices - 'Thingymajig Resources' rather than just plain old HR?

The other is just to continue the automation of lower value jobs, but to rapidly and deeply extend this into knowledge work as well, potentially splitting the workforce between those who are designing and managing the things, and those who are supporting them.

That applies to HR, as well as to the other people in our organisations.

And it's another reason why HR needs to understand IOT.  This one may not be an HR strategy, but it's definitely something we should be talking to our IT colleagues about.

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