Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/149047
HRO Today Forum time slots. This initiative has succeeded "by couching the same kind of structure the Disney case did in a negative way in a positive way [see example below], by aligning the incentives," said Werbach. "The restaurants want to generate more revenue, and so do the servers." The numbers backup these claims of success, as restaurants using the program have reported two to four percent increases in revenue, not an insignificant amount in the restaurant business. Job satisfaction among the servers also went up, a fact that shows the power of "intrinsic rewards." Werbach mentioned three main intrinsic rewards that motivate people: competence, autonomy, and relatedness, or a sense of being part of a group working toward a larger goal. Well-designed games can provide players all three of these rewards. When Gaming Goes Wrong However, not every attempt at gamification will be an automatic success. Werbach points out a number of potential pitfalls in what he calls "PBL" games, which employ points, badges, and leaderboards as their main game elements. The first risk is that employees will recognize the artificiality of the game and stop responding to the rewards presented by the game. "The other danger is that [the game] will be too effective," he said, "People will get too focused on the rewards and they will lose sight of…the underlying goals and the underlying reason that they are engaged with the activity." This possibility stems from psychology, which has found that overreliance on "extrinsic rewards," or those that do not come internally from the game participant, can be counterproductive. As Werbach said, "It causes people to think that the only reason to do the activity is for the reward, not because it's something they actually want to do." Another hazard is that the activity becomes manipulative. Werbach mentioned a Disney gamification effort that sought to track the speed and efficiency of its housekeeping staff and then display that information on a leaderboard. The results were disastrous. "People started freaking out," Werbach said, "They said, 'Oh my god, I guess I can't take bathroom breaks anymore.' They said, 'Look I'm near the bottom, I'm getting fired.'" The program, which a 2011 Los Angeles Times article referred to as the 'electronic whip,' actually caused a decrease in productivity. [52] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | JULY/AUGUST 2013 "There's a danger of just blindly applying these game elements without thinking it through more systematically," Werbach stated. Successful gamification efforts employ a "structured, iterative" game design process that includes testing on real people and then revising the game based on the subjects' feedback. Successful gamification efforts will take into account the progression a player experiences. "A good game actually teaches you how to play the game by playing the game itself," explained Werbach, "It pulls you along and stays interesting and challenging as you get more experience, up to the point of mastery." He pointed out that there are two goals when designing a game: getting people to play and keeping them playing. Gamification is not useful in every situation. Werbach noted four points that a company should consider before deciding to employ game thinking. Impact of motivation. "It's not always important to performance indicators that you care about in a business whether people are motivated." Autonomy. "Are there meaningful choices?" asked Werbach. "People need to feel like they have the opportunity to do something that then provides a result." Structured for execution. "Some things are inherently vague or more creative or abstract," said Werbach. "Is [the situation in question] structured enough so that you can define what exactly are the behaviors?" Alignment. "A gamified system can potentially enhance and piggyback on that, or it can be totally unrelated or in conflict even with the existing incentive structure. There needs to be thought into whether the gamification can be done in a way that doesn't pull against the incentives that are already being created by the existing structures that are out there." If a business situation passes these four tests, then it may be an appropriate target for gamification. Bringing Gaming to RPO As RPO President at Pontoon, Beygelman took the stage to provide a practitioner's view on gamification. He exhibited some of the early efforts to implement gamification in the recruitment process. He began with a disclaimer. "Where gamification is in the context of recruitment is way before early adopter. It may be even before the pioneer phase. Right now a lot of it is just discussion." He stressed that different recruitment channels, from internal mobility to