Achieving commitment and loyalty from employees is an ever growing demand in HR. Employer brands are more and more visible, which sheds a new light on employer values. The appearance of generation Y (and soon Z) on the labor market creates special challenges for modern HR, and increasingly the answer is gamification. It’s this industry where Games for Business, in strategic partnership with PwC, plays an ever-growing role as a provider, and its unique methodology, WorkLike Reality, has achieved serious success.
G4B’s online enterprise simulation is an employer branding and recruitment solution that presents the entire work environment, where the system simulates the various jobs candidates can apply for. In the application users can tour the echelon by accomplishing pre-set goals, and a virtual coach is supporting them with feedback in their career. Their decisions – just like in real life – define their career. Mandatory activities, expectations, virtual spaces, and the tone of various game events authentically reflect the employer brand and corporate culture of the simulated company.
For the virtual employee working at a company becomes an adventure, job positions provide various game roles. Through testing these roles, players gain an overview of the operation from several aspects, and with the help of the integrated online Assessment Center, they can measure their competencies, thus their self-recognition improves. All in all, users will have a more complex and accurate picture not only of their future employer, but also of the employee values they represent.
What about the colleagues? The game’s social media integration supports the formation and reinforcement of teams within the game, while also providing a communication bridge with communities outside the game with its motivational solutions based on hashtag sharing.
What is the gamification aspect here? If we consider that the solution makes one, or rather several processes outside the game quicker and more cost-effective, we are talking about gamification. What are these processes?
- 1. The solution builds a communication bridge towards young employees. Through its mechanism it makes quality information comprehensible in large quantities,
- 2. through which it improves the employer brand,
- 3. which directly improves the recruitment process by creating a larger pool and better quality pool;
- 4. its integrated filtering solutions decrease the time spent on talent selection.
So what were the results of WorkLike Reality in PwC’s 2013 ‘Multipoly’ campaign? The game attracted players from 81% of Hungarian higher educational institutions. 84% of users said they loved to play with the game. Most of them received lots of internal information about the company and 77% of users answered that the game changed their mind about PwC in positive ways. Throughout 3 consecutive campaigns with Multipoly (in 1.5 years) the number of applicants to PwC increased by 85%.
Games for Business created the game ‘I Know IT’ for IT Services Hungary, a member of the T-Systems Group, which is also based on the WorkLike Reality concept. This game has attracted over 2,700 players within 6 weeks, 55% of which registered with their Facebook accounts. 66% of players had at least 1 year of work experience, which proved preconceptions that games are only popular among the newest job-seeking generations wrong. On average players spent 2.5 hours engaging with the company through the game.
Based on their joint success, PwC and Games for Business entered a strategic partnership to provide gamified solutions for various areas in HR, such as recruitment and selection, as well as employee engagement projects in onboarding and internal training.