One of the most interesting pick from Gartner’s technology trends for 2013 was the imminent impact of gamification on the enterprise of tomorrow. The argument goes that 70% of Americans hate their job, but many go home at night to complete routine tasks in front of a computer screen by playing computer games (from Angry Birds to Resident Evil). Now if games developers have created scenarios where people want to achieve, why should we not do this in the workplace?
There are good examples of gamification being used for marketing, customer engagement and training. I have been wondering how the game strategy might be manifested in the dreary workplace of IT systems that I know and love. I decided to pick an area that I know– IT service desks – and imagine a gamed environment.
There need to be 3 components in a good game – an objective, a reward and a compelling environment.
1. The objective. Service desks should be measuring 3 key areas – staff productivity, service level breaches and customer satisfaction. The last of these is fairly difficult to manipulate (unless your father owns a chocolate factory).
For staff productivity, the obvious approach is to measure number of calls actioned. A more interesting strategy would be to measure how long it takes an analyst to fill in fields and move around the screen, very much like hand eye co-ordination games.
Service level breaches are often a result of poor interactions between first and second level teams. Providing visibility to expiring service levels and meaningful rewards could motivate the second level staff to pick up tickets and find speedy resolutions.
Customer satisfaction is the gold standard of measures (especially net promoter scores). The front line staff can have a major impact, but ultimately the result shows how well the whole IT team is working. The environment needs to make it easy for customers to give feedback.
2. Rewards. For sure there is merit in conventional rewards against objectives, but they have to be used carefully within the context of a game. True gamification requires that the rewards are integral to the game. For example a service desk analyst might get an “immediate escalation power” as a reward. This lets him or her prioritise a call in the queue and may improve their customer satisfaction score, leading to further reward.
Analysts at the second level, may accumulate a virtual currency (e.g. tchotchkes) every time a call is solved through a known problem that they resolved. This would encourage them to quickly analyse escalated tickets and create, then solve problems. The tchotchkes may be used to buy training on new technology, to develop system improvements or just to browse the internet. For many analysts visible mastery is reward enough, for others they can see work as an epic quest.
Games could have some level of randomization to add interest and fairness. The supervisor could create a shiniest shoe award one day or a best overheard service call reward.
3. The environment. Maybe the most challenging area for change is the visual and social environment. The screens for conventional service desk tools are a myriad of tabs and fields, a long way from the background in Call of Duty. Analysts could arrange their own screens, introduce background graphics and link their own visuals to objectives (e.g. a fire breathing dragon appears when service levels are breached).
Of more importance is the social environment. Staff must feel part of a great team, with a mixture of healthy competition and collaboration. A visible leader board can provide status to successful analysts. The game must provide opportunities for high score gamers to coach lower achievers and create team outcomes where everyone can win together.
Staff might get stressed about the scores that they do achieve, leading to higher absenteeism and higher turnover. It might be that having game objectives that are not explicitly linked to personal performance objectives is an advantage.
One of the exciting aspects of gamification is that it gives management a whole new set of levers to pull. With sufficient measurement and continuous improvement, managers should be able to adapt the games to deliver the organizational outcomes they wish to achieve, without the unintended consequences that are inevitable in any measurement regime.
How do you feel about going to work to play a game?