In fact, I have been working with IT teams for many years and, it seems to me, I know what they need to feel happy, not only after the end of the working day.
When I was an analyst in Obninsk, one of my tasks was to motivate IT employees, among other things, I was responsible for organizing team building events.
I have been fond of computer games for a long time, and have always believed in their potential as a tool to increase the involvement of IT employees, intangible motivation, and as a result - increase loyalty. At first, I was thinking about IT - because we have a common IT platform, and wherever you work, you still remain an IT specialist. And computer games are a network story that can introduce and unite people from different regions.
We decided to try out the e-sports team building format with a small group of colleagues - we just stayed after work and played our favorite games. In 2016, the first tournament was held for employees of Obninsk and Moscow IT. We played Counter strike 1.6 and Quake3, only 30 people participated.
Achievements
The games aroused interest, colleagues wanted to join us - first from information security, and then from business. In our next tournament in 2017 in Counter strike 1.6, 11 teams already fought - 70 employees of the Obninsk RP, including girls.
We broadcast all the games live on the youtube channel, we got fans and a prize fund of 80 thousand rubles.
This experience convinced us that games really help to unite employees.
Immediately after the end of the tournament, applications from other regions came to us, the most active was Tomsk. So the story sent to be local: in 2018 a tournament was organized for the Obninsk and Tomsk RP. Competitions were in Counter strike 1.6, 27 teams with a total number of 160 people took part in them. We had the first women's team, and the girl was recognized as the best player in the tournament - Maria Bityukova, whose team reached the quarter-finals.
Because of the four-hour time difference, it was not easy to figure out how to organize games and broadcasts, but it worked out.
On youtube, everyone could watch not only games, but also unique content created by a support group from Tomsk. For each game, on average, about 50 people watched, in the peak views reached a hundred. The prize fund of the tournament has grown to one hundred thousand rubles.
Every time we try to do something new, raise the bar.
In 2019, they held the first online team building in the history of the Bank throughout Russia, the CSGO tournament. 265 people from 30 cities of Russia took part in it. The prize fund of the tournament grew to 150 thousand rubles. The tournament finale was held in Obninsk, the team from Tomsk was sent for the lan finals.
Also this year in three offices - Moscow, Tomsk and Obninsk - we created game zones that are always available for our colleagues.
Back to our tournaments!
Brief statistics of engagement:
Brief statistics on youtube:
Who cares, here is our youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOEf5_ssdoZcoa_T2n7gyVA
We are constantly improving communication tools: today a group is working in telegram, where participants from various cities and time zones actively communicate, teams use Discord game voice chat for joint training, we create a website.
It is very pleasant that all our activities are supported by the Bank's management. Moreover, some leaders come to broadcast.
It's great that our HCFB gaming community is growing - according to the most conservative estimates, we now have 450 active players and more than a hundred fans. I am sure that after the Dota2 tournament there will be much more of both.
For the first time in history, we also put our team of colleagues at the Moscow Business Champions League tournament among Moscow enterprises. Now our guys reached the ¼ finals.
Difficulties
The biggest difficulty is to understand how to implement the plan: to think through logistics, legal subtleties. But you can figure it all out, because our colleagues always help us and meet us.
Of course, someone considers games to be evil, and the employees' desire to play is explained solely by the excess of free time at work. In our case, a pattern break occurs in people, and this is normal, because everything new usually scares. By the way, we play all games outside of working hours.
Meaning
Just working and going home at seven in the evening is incredibly boring for me. I want to do something else - to communicate, exchange ideas, make friends. And there are many people like me - those who really love the Bank, want to work here, share their hobbies, make the Bank's life bright and interesting. It seems to me that the more such people, the easier and, at the same time, it is more interesting to formulate Home's philosophy.
When we started, we did not agitate anyone. People came to us themselves, because they were interested. We have stories when guys who have never played before and understand nothing in games, now watch broadcasts at night and cheer on colleagues, start talking, help each other.
ESports is a non-trivial choice, not many companies are ready to go on such projects. For me, our philosophy is precisely in this - in openness, in trust, in readiness to try new things.
Future
We have big plans. Here are the main ones:
- “Legalize” cyber games as a team building tool, make them one of the ongoing engagement projects at the Bank.
- Hold an eSports tournament throughout the Home Credit Group. The game is a universal language uniting people from different countries. In my opinion, this direction has great potential.
Profits for the Bank
Of course, the first and most important thing is the involvement of employees.
The second is the promotion of the Bank in the youth community. According to estimates of analytical agencies, the average audience of players in Russia is about 50 million people, of which more than half are between the ages of 14 and 35.
There are more and more cyber players among our potential employees. It is important for the bank, as an employer, to be on the same wavelength with them, to be a modern company. This is a tool for involving children in our philosophy. Recently, a new employee has registered on our platform. He came to Home one and a half months ago, while he knows no one, and was pleasantly surprised that our movement exists. For him, our community is an adaptation tool. We invited him to the organizing team. So far this is an isolated case, but I am sure that there will be many of these.
Thank you all for your attention. GG, GL.