Gamification of business processes. How it works?

Recently he gave a detailed interview for UP41 HR Management magazine.

As a result, as often happens, not much is left of the initial material, so a full-fledged article is obtained.



With permission from the publisher, I am publishing an excerpt regarding gamification.



- The focus of our conversation today is gamification. Let's talk about it.



- Gamification is a great tool. But by itself, it does not work, and it is effective when it solves certain problems. Therefore, we also use such a tool as gamification. But in my understanding, this is all part of the automation of HR processes. I mean, to consider it separately from the processes of personnel management does not make sense.



- Tell me, did you or your customers introduce gamification into your company?



- Generally speaking, gamification is any process where there are game mechanics with clear rules. I have a company of up to 100 people. If we talk about gamification techniques, then we deal with them every day. We make fun of each other, make some promises, set plans and so on. Employee levels, new positions, creative tasks, self-development. This is all the mechanics of gamification. There is also a carrot and stick. As a result, those who have distinguished receive various rewards, tangible and intangible.

If we are talking about the automation of these processes using gamification technologies, then, fortunately, in our company we have the opportunity not to automate. We are a small company, concentrated in one location, and can constantly communicate personally with each other. In this sense, my motto is this: if you can’t not automate, it’s better not to automate.



- Let's talk about gamification. What is gamification for?



- I’ll try to answer this way: gamification is needed to motivate any actions that a business needs, and by standard means he, this business, cannot receive such motivation. If absolutely rude: one instrument is money, the other is glory. For example: a standard sales story: sell more - get more. This is just about money, there is no glory here. Therefore, such motivation does not work super-efficiently. And if we come up with gamification, where the best sellers will not only be rewarded for the actual sales, but they will be assigned certain ranks at the company level, will they be publicly in high places in various ratings and will receive additional privileges for this? This can stimulate sales at the right time (for example, in the "high season"). Or another example is the work of service departments. How to measure the level of service? How to motivate to give the best service? How to competently reward employees for the best service? This can be solved with the help of a gamification mechanic.



- Have you implemented gamification in the companies that ordered your services?



- Yes, and still introduce, thank God. We have published cases from those on the site that we can talk about. These are banks, and industrial companies, and retail, and pharmaceutical companies, and even government organizations.



- In what format was the introduction of gamification for them?



- One of the brightest examples using the gamification mechanic is a project for HomeCredit Bank , which we have been implementing together with the team of this bank for several years. A game called Game of Homes (similar to the famous Game of Thrones series). The game is just about how to tie together game mechanics, business indicators and increase the level of service in the company.



Before I talk about the project, I’ll tell you what, in my opinion, is the problem that companies face when automating gamification.



When it comes to gamification, everyone talks about the conditions of the game. Fulfilling these conditions, you get some kind of conditional bun. As a rule, the vicious circle of gamification implies a call for action such as “Let's go to the HR portal more, study some courses, generate some knowledge”. And for this we will receive domestic currency - coins. We will save these coins. And then we will have a prize store. Where there are mugs, caps and t-shirts. There we will stick a telephone and lunch with a leadership - top management as a VIP gift. And people on these coins will be able to buy prizes. Here we will have such gamification.



We did similar projects. They took off and died before yielding tangible results. Take a look. We, as an introduction company and an HR team, excited people by the fact that now it’s not so simple on the portal, not only do you tremble every six months for an assessment and take electronic courses, and tests are prescribed for you.



And there will be gamification. Where there are likes, badges, titles, and this whole thing is tied up with some kind of internal currency.



The active part of the company is undermined by the task, trying to get a present. HR works for this active part of the company. Then the active part of the company “warms up” the neutral one, and people who I call “Yazhegovoril” look at it all. At some point in time, the game reaches its peak of activity. Many employees in the company take courses and tests, like each other with pleasure, earn coins and exchange them for prizes with pleasure.



However, at some point in time, it turns out that everyone who wanted to have lunch with the chef had already had lunch, everyone who wanted to have a mug had already received it, a cap, and so on. Where is more? What to strive for?



As a result, two problems are exposed. First: the understanding comes that there’s nothing more to do on the portal again. The second and main. Employees understand that this has nothing to do with their core business processes. And gamification itself does not affect business processes. For example, he is a seller in a bank and works with individuals. He needs to retain existing customers and sell as many credit lines and products as possible. His main work is connected with this. And he is trying to be great on the HR portal. He has a bunch of titles on the portal, he is in the first place in the ratings, he has all the prizes from the store on the shelf of the house and even photos from lunch with the general, and business is not getting any better. A person does not start from this to sell more or better communicate with customers. On the contrary, it starts to bother him. There he is trying to be well done; there, the mug is still unearned. As a result, the business claims HR.



In the end, people like "Yazhegovoril" begin to say: "Yeah, we said." The fact that we have gamified has no long-term result. As a result, the experiment is recognized as successful or unsuccessful - the HR – team leaves, unable to withstand relations with real life. And the company is postponed that gamification is bad, it's not about them. We spent money, spent time, business cursed, and the whole project was dying, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.



- Tell us more about the case with Home Credit Bank.



- The story that is happening now at Home Credit Bank has already been built differently from the very beginning. At the beginning of the project, the client already had the game “Homemania”, and there was good mechanics, which we used as the basis of the new project. The mechanics are very simple. Each employee achieved specific goals in their key performance indicators (KPIs). As part of the loyalty program, they were awarded internal currency for excellent work successes, achieved results and following the bank's values. Currency could be spent on the purchase of goods in your own store. That was all. What have we added? We built a gamification procedure over this process.



But the most important thing that we did - we made a bridge between promises, success in training and business performance, namely, sales.



A game world has been developed for employees of the company, in which mechanics such as creating personal tasks and promises, fighting in the arena of knowledge, and training in the citadel of knowledge are available. For the execution of actions, users receive two currencies: dragon glass, for which the user can buy artifacts for fighting; gold coins, for which the opportunity to buy real goods is available.



You can dwell on the mechanics of the “Promise” in more detail. The user makes a promise that he will achieve the goal for a certain period, and thereby challenges himself. After a certain time, information about the user's actual performance comes; if they exceed the planned ones, then the promise is considered set off, and the user receives gold coins. Each promise is not just words that are needed in order to get an internal game currency, but an employee performance indicator that can be evaluated using our system and analyze the situation that has developed in the company.



In order to pump in promises, you need to not only implement your KPI well, but also gain new knowledge. To do this, we have created a space for training in the citadel of knowledge and testing knowledge in battles in the arena. For each activity, the user can get gold coins and dragon glass.



Sales fights can be considered new this year: managers choose the Bank’s product for which the fight will take place. Then, an opponent is selected for them from any region of Russia based on the number of subordinates and the average level of sales. During the fight, a team led by a leader must achieve goals. As a result of the battle, the winner is the one who surpasses the opponent in terms of the total sales of the selected product. All managers are divided into divisions and receive a reward in the form of gold coins. All Bank employees have access to a common team rating.



In addition to the mechanics that influence the business, game mechanics are introduced into the game. So, for example, on Valentine's Day, a mass campaign was launched to send users valentines to each other. For Easter we created a mini-game “Catch the Dragon” in the form of a clicker, where the user needed 1 minute to catch the hatching dragons. To maintain the competitive spirit, a tournament was launched in the arena - the Brain Slaughterhouse. In general, every game mechanic was built into the game balance and allowed them to earn a particular currency.



The game exists for the third year and was launched in several stages: first, we introduced the office staff, and then the contact center employees were launched into the game.



When the game started, we got a few side effects. There is a problem with the Internet at workplaces of users and productivity of workplaces, therefore, a desktop application was developed for the game, and the game was implemented in the corporate mobile application Our Home.



Summing up, we can say that the game is constantly developing and is supplemented by new mechanics that support the competitive and gaming spirit of employees, as well as help to influence business indicators.



- Is the game worth the candle for small companies?



- Our whole life is in a sense permeated by the mechanics of gamification. We are meeting - this is also a kind of game. You need something from me, I need something from you. You have your own KPIs, I have mine :).



In general, in any successful company there is a gamification technique, conscious or not. They call it so or not. That is, any game mechanics that the company uses internally. Starting from the designation of conditions such as “Let's sell 20% more, or whoever sells the most will receive a double bonus” or “What, can’t we squeeze the project until the end of the year?” And let's squeeze ”-“ And what will happen to us from this? ” In my understanding, this is all a game.



If we talk about specific, for example, techniques and services, then the techniques do not cost anything. The very method of gamification and social strokes from calculating plus-money to the leader's shirts - they are available even for a company of 10 people. For example, when about 15 years ago we fought for first place in the central federal district in the sales of the 1C – Bitrix platform, we fought for the flag that was handed to the leader. And we became a leader in 2007 or 2008, and we had a flag and t-shirts. And the programmers are the guys who made these sales, the project managers, and all of us. We put on these T-shirts and walked proud: we did it.



Another question is whether it is worth taking and implementing a business at the levels of additional mechanics, awards, badges, ranks and so on? Up to about 100 people, and so it is clear who is well done and who is not. For example, Vanya is objectively well done, and Petya will probably not stay. And here, it seems to me, to a lesser extent, these things work. It is more informal to do these things here. It makes no sense to hang these labels. More hassle than real exhaust.



Still, gamification techniques are an attempt to socialize large masses when there is no way to reach everyone manually.



Another important point is the introduction of IT gamification tools. Here you can start with the use of cloud ready-made solutions. We have several finished products. We have developed several similar products that use competitive mechanics: BoxBattle - a mobile service for pumping knowledge in any field and a sales and service training simulator Deal . In the market you can find other services. As a rule, they do not cost a lot of money, and they can solve specific business problems using game mechanics.



- What is expensive?



- Custom automation is expensive. For example, to link the results of an automated assessment in a company with the appointment of staff development plans and compare with the dynamics of sales in the company.



In the same HomeCredit Bank, we made a separate game world with a bunch of characters, locations, mechanics, the game is connected on the one hand with the company's HR platform, on the other hand, with the company's business system and is accessible from a mobile device. It is clear that the creation, support and development of such a product costs money and resources within the company.



Conventionally, the automation of gamification, I think, like any automation of HR-processes, and e-learning, you need to start if 500+ people work in a team.



While the company is able to "reach" in person to its employee, it is not necessary to automate. As soon as it becomes economically expensive to “reach” the same quality to each employee, you need to think about automation.



- Euroset at the Human Resource Management in the Business Club shared that gamification raised the percentage of sales to 70!

From what? From 69? And what was the plan, 100%? :)



- It was sales that increased by 70%. It is sales growth. How do you measure success? How can this be traced, at what percentage do sales rise upon implementation?

There is a basic metric - the NPS index (Customer Loyalty Index). This is the time. There is information on the dynamics of sales. These are two.



Everything else is our hypothesis. By gamification we, of course, additionally motivate the employee. Are there any real sales growth? Does it somehow correlate with development, gamification, rating, bonuses and other tools? An employee who fulfills all promises - specifically, is his sales growing? If yes, then, in general, we are moving in the right direction. Funny as it may seem, there is simply no other criterion.



True, there may be some cunning. What do I mean by cunning? The company "Euroset" does not specify to us: these sales have increased in comparison with what? For example, in the low season they had sales of 100%, in the high they grew to 170%. And planned in the high season they had to rise to 200. Is it good or bad? Poorly. Gamification or any other factors influenced this? One must have courage and a desire to understand this.



Another thing is that having an HR-platform with gamification and a connection with business indicators, we can learn in detail up to each employee the relationship between investments and real returns and try to influence both the first and the second. This is the main bonus that gamification gives us, and in general HR automation.