Andy Petroski, Emerging Technologies Leader and Author, is allowing our readers to read portions of his work. This article comes from his book Alternate Reality Games: Gamification For Performance.
Imagine new employees at your organization working as a team to find the missing company CEO, versus sitting all day listening to presentations about the company culture, the organizational structure, and code of conduct expectations. Instead, the search for the CEO requires investigating the company culture, organizational structure, and code of conduct versus hearing about it. How much more engaged do you think the new hires will be? Do you think a highly immersive orientation experience might affirm their decision to work for your organization?
Replacing a single employee can cost about 1-1/2 times the annual salary of the employee being replaced. [1] These costs can include time and money associated with lost productivity, advertising, human resources, and onboarding. Yet, even in tough economic times, organizations regularly see some of the best talent and potential walk out the door, sometimes shortly after joining the organization. Consider some of these statistics:
Engagement is a multifaceted element of employer-employee relations, and it’s not easily addressed. [8] 70% of Forbes global 2000 companies will use gamification to boost engagement, retention, and revenues. ARGs are a form of gamification; one that intersects the boundaries between playing a game and performing daily activities like attending employee orientation, collaborating with a team, or selling products.
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) can be a tool in the employee engagement strategy. Let’s have a look at some potential scenarios for using ARGs to increase employee engagement, increase collaboration, optimize training time, develop skills, and fuel innovation.
New employees at a health care insurance company must find the “Keith the Claim” character and follow him throughout the building to help Keith fulfill his destiny to become a completed claim. Along the way, new employees research information, ask questions of current employees, and create a story that details the life and times of “Keith the Claim”.
Employees create a Knowledge Management taxonomy that is the basis for a new language that will allow humans and robots to work together.
A month prior to safety training, staff members are asked to identify the common thread among several accidents at a production facility. Are they sabotage, faulty equipment, inaccurate safety procedures, inattentive workers, or something even more dangerous?
Employees keep a log and a list of “who dun-its” as they investigate safety incidents and bring the materials for use during the safety training.
Salespeople try to uncover the identity of the perfect customer by researching data and sharing stories with each other about what qualities make a good prospect.
Prior to a national managers meeting, it’s announced that the company is moving the corporate offices to Mars as part of a worldwide re-colonization effort. The managers must submit ideas for how the company will establish itself and consider changes in facilities, organizational structure, operations, products; everything the company does.
These scenarios present the potential for ARGs as a solution not only for the employee engagement challenge, but a variety of other business issues as well. To evaluate a variety of actual ARGs and consider how your organization might benefit from a similar type of ARG, stay tuned for our next article.
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