|
|||
|
|
|
||||||
|
Game On!
Rick Sharp brazenly admits to playing computer games on company time. And if you think that's crazy, given the tight nature of the current job market, you'll probably be floored to know his bosses actually encourage him, and all his colleagues, to play. No, Rick, 22, doesn't work as a video-game programmer (he's actually a call-center "communicator" at Akron Media, a division of Akron, Ohio-based Infocision, a teleservices company), but the computer games he and his colleagues play on company time are quietly becoming a bigger part of many companies' incentive programs. That's because the point-driven games in Snowfly's Capstone program -- purchased by Infocision and others -- are designed to motivate employees to achieve specific goals by providing chances to win rewards they really want, such as reloadable Visa debit cards and paid days off, while also helping businesses get the type of productivity and morale levels from workers that they want to see. "It's extra money in my pocket, and extra motivation for meeting my goals," says Sharp. The idea of immediately rewarding the right kinds of work behaviors is also what's propelling companies such as Infocision to implement Snowfly's programs, says Brooks Mitchell, CEO of Snowfly, a Laramie, Wyo.-based incentive-program provider. (See sidebar for more on the program.) "With this technology, you simply win game tokens for doing something good, and then you can play a game, win and go right down to the cafeteria and get a latte with your winnings," he says. Or, you can do what Sharp did recently, when he used the winnings from his at-work game-playing for a more high-octane purchase. "I just used my points to pay for gas on a road trip to Myrtle Beach," the Generation Yer says. "It was money well spent." His glowing critique is mirrored by Rebecca Barney, director of client services for the media division of Infocision. The company has more than 4,000 employees working at 30 call centers throughout Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. "The communicators love it," she says. "It's extra cash and perks in their pockets." But, she adds, the company also shares in the benefits of the program. "We can specifically put a focus on something as a short-term goal, and also give 'Attaboys' when we hear a great phone call," she says. "Any time you can reward someone for a very specific behavior, it's a good thing." As the working world continues moving to Web 2.0, companies that use computer games to improve productivity and morale may not only find themselves attracting and retaining workers who grew up playing them, such as Generation Xers and Yers, but also anyone who enjoys winning something they really want just for doing a good job.
Shaping Behavior Mitchell, who is also a professor in the College of Business at the University of Wyoming, says his company's Capstone program is based on changing how people think and act. "It's absolutely, 100-percent pure behavioral psychology," he says. "It is 'behavior-shaping,' where you take the big outcome you desire and break it down to little components, then incentivize those little components." For example, Mitchell says: "You should reward getting daily homework done, not just getting an A at the end of the year." When an employee receives electronic game tokens for achieving a certain goal set by his or her manager, he or she can go online to the Capstone game room and quickly play a game of choice. There are numerous games to choose from, each generating a random number of points, anywhere from two to 5,000 per play. Those points can then be redeemed for rewards such as adding money to a Visa debit card, dress-down-day privileges or other things employees want. "The games are a fun, engaging tool for delivering the proven motivational power of intermittent positive reinforcement that makes the program sustainable and successful," Mitchell says. The main motivation for creating the game, he says, probably came from an article he read in the Journal of Applied Psychology while studying for his doctorate in behavioral sciences. "There was a story about research a guy did back in the '20s or '30s exploring ways to reduce a high rate of absenteeism on a certain day at one company," he says. "He noticed a high absentee rate on Mondays, so he started a game on Tuesdays in which each employee who showed up on time drew a playing card from the supervisor's desk and then posted the card on a bulletin board to show that they were on time. The following Monday, the on-time workers were allowed to draw two cards and whoever had the highest poker hand won 20 bucks. Absenteeism dropped like a rock," Mitchell says. His conclusion at the time? "Steady reinforcement will get a correct behavior going," he says, "but intermittent reinforcement is what keeps that behavior going." Fast forward to several years ago, when Mitchell was in Elko, Nev., and noticed that a tour bus of senior citizens had pulled up outside a casino and was quickly disgorging itself of its excited occupants. "They were moving fast and giggling, and I thought to myself: 'They're playing and losing money and having a great time. How can we incorporate this [sense of excitement] into a business?' " It was at that point that Mitchell's vision of the modern incentive-based game program was born, nurtured by the work of behavior-based technology expert Aubrey Daniels and an increasing body of research that advocates letting people play games at work in order to improve morale and productivity. Citing research by authors John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade in a book entitled Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever, Mitchell says that "gamers are much more motivated and attracted to pay-for-work-type systems with instant feedback. Not only feedback, but also real-time, reward-and-redemption systems."
Shifting Paradigms In Mitchell's estimation, there is a "huge differential" between the multibillion-dollar industry of traditional incentive programs and what his company now offers. "We've had some pretty stiff opposition from incentive companies, because we're breaking the mold," he says. "Years ago, if you met your sales goal, you'd win a trip or a set of steak knives, and that was it. Then came along point systems, where you'd earn points and then save them and spend them in a catalog." This, Mitchell says, is where the "wheels fall off" the motivation bus. The rewards in those catalogs may sometimes be seen by employees as overpriced, and therefore contribute to the assertion that "one-third of performance-feedback programs will decrease employee performance," he says, noting a 1998 study by researchers Avi Kluger and Angelo DeNisi that found one-third of such programs have no effect and only one-third will increase performance. "That's the nice thing about money as a reward," Mitchell says. "It's what people want, it gives people choice and it's the easiest way in the world to [have bigger-ticket items] sliced into small pieces to reward behavior." And because the managers can control the worth of points and how they can be redeemed, Mitchell says, it is impossible to "break the house." "These are random payout games, and you only reward people who perform. If you win two tokens for coming to work on time, you only have those two tokens momentarily. It only takes about five seconds" to play, and those tokens cannot be replayed again. "A company can set a budget [within the program] very easily," he adds. " 'What do we want to pay an employee who upgrades a sale on a call? Maybe five tokens?' It's fair and fun, and rewards everyone equally."
Seeing Results Teresa Bledsoe, the human resource manager in the Nashville, Tenn. card-production services division of Fiserv, a Brookfield, Wis.-based provider of software and services to the financial industry, says her company has been using the Snowfly program since July 2005. "We wanted to award employees more frequently and make it more personalized to them, as well as give our managers a tool that is easy to [use]," she says. The program works well for the 100 employees at her center, she says, because they can recommend things they want to see as rewards. "From an HR perspective, I might come up with what I think is a great gift, but the employee receiving it might not even want it," she says. Another feature of the program allows Bledsoe to see which supervisors are actually using the program. "From the management perspective, we want to recognize employees daily," she says. "If [supervisors] aren't doing that, we want to know why." She adds that, prior to the company's implementation of Snowfly Capstone, an average of 41 percent of her employees achieved bi-weekly perfect attendance. After implementation, average perfect attendance rates went up to 67 percent. "We're in manufacturing, so that's an important stat for us," she says. While she acknowledges that older employees were a little hesitant to use the game at first, "after a little training, it was a lot easier for them" to play, she says. Her non-Gen X and Y workers are more likely to use their points on gift cards and travel vouchers than for cash, she adds. That said, Richard Clark, a research professor of educational psychology and technology, and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at the University of Southern California, says he's seen no evidence to show that Generation X and Y workers are better suited to using such computer-centric games than other generations. "We don't know that there's any pro or con evidence out there," he says. But programs that use money rewards as incentives, such as Capstone, are on the right track towards increasing productivity, he says. "We found that, when gifts were chosen for people, the average increase in productivity was 13 percent," Clark says. "When the incentive was money or something people could choose for themselves, the impact on productivity nearly doubled to 24 percent." Before choosing an incentive program, he says, HR leaders should first ask themselves if such a program is appropriate because they are "most powerful when executives believe more productivity is possible but isn't being achieved because of a lack of motivation," he says. Regardless of the prizes a company chooses to offer in order to encourage productivity in workers of all ages, Fiserv's Bledsoe has some final words of wisdom for HR leaders. "The key to whatever incentive program you have is that is has to be interactive and fun and easy," Bledsoe says. "It has to be consistent and frequent. If you can get a program with all those things, you'll see a tremendous upswing in the attitude and morale and overall excellence that you want to see at your workplace."
September 2, 2009 Copyright 2009© LRP Publications |
||||||
Print
Email
Write to the Editor
Reprints
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
© Copyright 2010 LRP Publications. All rights reserved.
|
||||