06 October, 2017

Gamification

A Revolutionary Phase for HR Management or a Myth?

Since the dawn of the 2nd decade of the 21st century, Gamification has emerged as a concept to induce certain types of behavior in participants. It is the construction and use of rules, often called game mechanics, to engage participants in the game. It is based on the belief that human beings possess a natural aptitude for competition, success, position, assertiveness, justice, and cessation.

We see a new trend emerging in India of the movement of services to products.1 Customers today are not paying for commodities, but the value, i.e. the contribution of the product to make their lives easier. This phenomenon encompasses the HR industry which performs the crucial role of providing learning to today’s workforce.

Consider the numerous emerging educational websites in the world such as Alison and Coursera.2 They are breaking existing models of how learning is delivered. They propose a model where classrooms are used not for content delivery by teachers but for discussions. Coming to social media, enterprises are trying to make their presence felt on Facebook and Twitter which were initially deemed to be for consumers.

These new phenomena require new learning methods for employees and companies must adapt to newer techniques to train their employees. Traditionally, companies in India have had an assembly line approach to learning. An employee enters the organization, gets stamped with certain course delivery and certifications, and is made a part of the workflow.

Today each action that a company takes, including learning, is questioned by the management and stockholders alike in terms of how that action provides the company with a strategic advantage. Every action the company takes needs to make it a differentiator and give it some strategic advantage. In this space, commodity learning is hardly going to help. With the influence of these factors, we see 2 trends emerging.

1.       The spending on learning is increasing
2.       Technology is enabling agility in learning

So what if learning could be productized, so as to stop redesigning it every time? What if social gamification and mobile concepts could be incorporated in training? What if India could come up with entrepreneurs providing solutions to help the CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) and CEOs address learning as a strategic imperative as opposed to a process checkpoint. Innovation will come from companies which don’t have a very large hiring volume, but the impact of each employee in those organizations is very high. Companies such as SAP SE, Yahoo!, which put a lot of value to the impact each person brings to the table naturally spend a lot of time ensuring a high productivity and efficiency of the employees. Another trait of such organizations is that they spend a lot of time in recruiting their employees.

Traditional business houses such as Tata, Bajaj, etc. are starting to put their confidence in such concepts.3 Some Indian segments fall in a Goldilocks zone for innovation, such as the BPO industry. Although hiring is done in large numbers, the assets are the people themselves.

The social layer of Gamification has already been built.4 This resonates when an enterprise incorporates Gamification and amplifies the value creation.

Today a lot of CHROs (Chief Human Resources Officers) are on notice from the CFOs. CFOs are increasingly asking the CHROs to either prove that HR is a strategic function valuable for the company, or be outsourced.5 HRs today are looking at 3 goals.

1.       How can the companies be more connected?
2.       How can neutral networks of learning be created inside the organization?
3.       How can performance be improved?

An excellent example of innovating in the area of performance management with Gamification was at Rypple before it was acquired by Salesforce.com. Rypple questioned why feedback has to be given annually or semi-annually rather than a regular process.6 As the CHROs face outside pressure to demonstrate strategic value, they look at the norm and experiment while breaking the norm. During these experiments, some would indeed work and come out as the best industry practices for current times. Some experiments may not work, but that will only open doors for more innovation.

A CHRO who has had a certain pedigree, probably had the best training at the best schools. But that becomes irrelevant for current times. Earlier their knowledge would have been relevant for 20 years, but today they have to reinvent themselves and their thinking every few years. Already, new forums such as LinkedIn groups are emerging where CHROs and CLOs get together and engage with academia and trainers. This has been possible due to democratized access to information which is growing at an exponential rate. Some roles are bound to go extinct in this process, but this will help create a better evolution of the CHRO.

References

1. Ganesh V, 28 July 2013. Moving away from IT services to products. Business Line, The Hindu.
2. 11 July 2014. True Activist.
3. 20 May 2014. Tata Interactive Systems recognized among ‘Top 20 Content Development Companies 2014’ globally. TATA Interactive Systems.
4. 19 July 2013. The Landscape of Learning: Gamification in Indian HR. People Matters Online.
5. Benko C, Gorman T, Steinberg A R, 2014. Disrupting the CHRO: Following in the CFO’s footsteps. Deloitte Review, Issue #14.
6. Debow D, 20 June 2011. Rypple Re-invents the Performance Review. Performance Reviews, Saesforce Work.com.