This document discusses how gamification can be used in HR to assess and develop talent. It explains that companies are recognizing the need to effectively acquire, develop, and retain talent. Gamification uses game mechanics like competition, achievement and status to provide insights into how candidates and employees approach real work situations. Examples are given of companies using gamified assessments and training programs linked to organizational goals. The document argues that gamification shows promise for improving engagement, productivity and retention when designed correctly for the specific industry and roles.

1. The Talent Game
Gamification in HR

2. Prepared By
Manu Melwin Joy
Assistant Professor
SCMS School of Technology and Management
Kerala, India.
Phone – 9744551114
Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com
Kindly restrict the use of slides for personal purpose.
Please seek permission to reproduce the same in public forms and presentations.

3. • Mickey Mantle, who is widely considered to have
been one of the greatest baseball players of all time,
once many years ago very aptly remarked, “It’s
unbelievable how much you don’t know about the
game you’ve been playing all your life.”

4. Talent Game
• Companies are recognizing
the implications of
competing intensely in “The
Talent Game” to acquire,
develop and retain talent.
Playing the game requires
you to understand the rules
and the underlying
constraints quickly, and
then use them to your
advantage.

5. Talent Game
• For instance, poker is based
on rules of probability where
the odds against a “straight”
are 254 to 1, while a “flush” is
508 to 1. Similarly, in HR, the
rules are simple: the odds to
source and select the right
talent, integrate and retain it
while keeping them
productive and happy can
seem to be unpredictable.

6. Talent Game
• A 2013 report by the
Aberdeen Group noted that
organizations face intense
pressure to efficiently
onboard more new talent
to meet company growth
objectives (49%), address
the shortage of critical skills
in the market place (44%)
and innovate their new hire
programs (29%).

7. Talent Game
• Traditionally, the purpose of the
HR department has been seen by
many line managers to find the
candidates, qualify them based
on an interview, train them using
a standard curriculum, answer
queries about the organization’s
culture and leave it to them to
find a way of working
productively. After that, HR
representatives cross their
fingers in hopes the talent will
stay and contribute to company
growth.

8. Introducing Gamification
• Gamification, like the name
suggests, selectively uses
the mechanics that bring
out people’s natural desires
for competition,
achievement, status, self-
expression, altruism and
closure when faced with a
real-life situation in the
form of a game.

9. Introducing Gamification
• The ways in which we play
these games, and then
demonstrate these
characteristics, can help line
and HR managers gain
insight from information
about us.

10. Introducing Gamification
• For instance, a software firm
hosts an engaging contest,
such as a coding challenge, to
assess the candidates with
their coding skills.
Traditionally, traits such as
entrepreneurial spirit, quick
decision-making and
problem-solving attitude are
taken at face value based on
answers to interview
questions.

11. Introducing Gamification
• A stock brokerage has people
play ‘Ring the Bottle’ as you
did possibly when you were a
child to assess their
achievement orientation.
Gamification, on the other
hand, offers the opportunity
to simulate the working
environment and create a
selection technique that
chooses the best talent.

12. Introducing Gamification
• For example, Marriott Hotels
launched a mobile app that
makes candidates virtually
perform hotel service
industry tasks. This provides
insight into how the
candidate would approach
real work and it helps
eliminate those applicants
lacking the patience or
aptitude for the job.

13. Introducing Gamification
• Today, many companies
provide ready-to-deploy
gamification solutions. Often,
they can go live in just a few
weeks. These modules focus
on creating an engaging
experience by using badges,
points and leaderboards,
rather than just visual
stimulation as seen in
conventional games.

14. Introducing Gamification
• Leaderboards specifically
infuse the feeling of
constructive competition,
accomplishment and help
assess if people network
with their peers, which are
stronger drivers of behavior
than the proverbial
“interview.”

15. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Gamification offers new
ways to align candidate
behavior with
organizational goals. So,
instead of telling an
employee that he “meets
expectations,” it is better to
say that he did not clear the
second level of the game.

16. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Instead of creating
performance ratings, HR
representatives can create
transparent leaderboards
with badges attached to
each level, so that an
employee knows how he or
she is doing in his business
unit, region, country or
globally.

17. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• If an organization has an
internal social media portal,
the conversations and chatter
around the game could be
redirected to create
employee engagement at this
“virtual water cooler.”

18. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Many companies have
evolved from initially using
these platforms as branding
vehicles to leveraging them
across the entire HR value
chain — attracting,
engaging, onboarding,
training and retaining
prospective candidates.

19. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Identifying and targeting
talent pools differentiates the
organizations that win from
the ones that do not.
Companies are starting to
realize that HR practices
based on the “one size fits
all” principle prevent the
business from improving
quality of hire, institutionalize
a culture, enhance employee
productivity and eventually,
grow customer satisfaction.

20. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Gamification applications
are most effective when
they are customized to
various industries and their
specific needs.

21. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• For example, some firms leverage their employee
base by creating recruitment ambassadors and lead
generators by conducting gamified events across
campuses. This achieves all the benefits of
crowdsourcing as well as creates an effective brand
for the organization.

22. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Gamified new hire programs are
personalized, engaging and often convey
a creativity within an organization.
Instead of sitting through days of
lectures or e-learning modules or videos,
the new employee can play a game
which also provides all the information
he or she needs, connect them to their
peers and even have fun on his first day
of work.

23. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• The cases for using gamification
are numerous and growing. SAP
uses games to educate its
employees on sustainability;
Unilever applies them to
training; Hays deploys them to
hire recruiters and the Khan
Academy uses it for online
education.

24. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• According to the Aberdeen
survey, organizations with
gamification in place improve
engagement by 48%, as
compared to 28% with those
who do not, and improve
turnover by 36% as compared
to 25%.

25. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Thanks to the advent of social
media and increasing focus on
analytics, gamification offers a
plethora of possibilities. Gartner
predicts that by 2014, more than
70% of global organizations will
have at least one gamified
application, which can range from
mastering a specific skill to
improving one’s health.

26. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• However, Gartner also says that
80% of gamified applications will
fail if not designed correctly. A
word of caution here: gamified
modules, based on performance,
work best for roles that are
relatively repetitive in nature.

27. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• It also works well for roles with
clearly measurable outcomes
and well-defined metrics.
Locating the right talent pool and
engaging specific segments by
customized games promises to
be a pragmatic solution to HR
woes across industries.

28. Linking Behavior With Organizational
Goals
• Gamification is changing the
very DNA of HR. One must
know everything about the
game one is playing and be
the best at it to ensure one’s
life is the best — now is the
time to play.