Una bozza del discorso che Fabio Viola terrà al Gamification HR Summit di Madrid il 22 Novembre 2017 sull’urgenza di ripensare e disegnare nuovi modelli organizzativi aziendali.
I would never have dreamed of being here with you sharing what I learned from a 37 years long great love (for the joy of my parents), 12 of which I spent designing and producing video games for companies like Electronic Arts Mobile, Vivendi Games, Digital Chocolate and so on. Unbelievable years, Anyway, my life is not the main topic of the talk.
Let me start with a real story. I am part of a clan in a famous online video game and there I met online for the first time our clan chief. He coordinates a group of players from all over the world, he talks with us in a perfect English, he helps the newcomers during onboarding phase, he constantly supports us and offers his mentorship, he elaborates strategies and assigns to each of us specific tasks correlated to our skills. He solves everyday team’s conflicts, he always updated us about new game features and encourages the team constantly even when we fail.
From a HR point of view, a worker like him is priceless. But you may be surprise from the second part of the story. I met him recently in the real life and his story is completely different. He got ordinary results at school and now at work, he is not pro-active and he just does his homeworks.
How is it possible that Cobra 90 (this is his nickname), one of the brilliant mind in the wold I never met, pays hundreds of euro yearly to be able to put his time and, above all, skills at the service of a community and at the same time he gets payed from a company and he becomes a completely different person.
I can assure you, this is not an isolated case.
Let me bring five, apparently off topic, insights which I would like to reflect on with you.
- Loyalty programs Active users have steadily declinedsince 2010 at a rate of 2% to 3% per year. Over 50% of accumulated points, with an estimated worth of $50 billion, are never redeemed.
- According to Gallup only 15% of the worldwide workforce is actively engaged in their companies, it means we are losing billions of dollars hiring “ghost” workers like Cobra 90.
- During the high school only 30% of the students are engaged in the classroom.
- According to the World Bank, election turnout is declining across the world. Over the last 25 years, the average global voter turnout rate dropped by more than 10%.
- 80% of senior managers are not passionate about their work
- Last but not least and probably the most shocking story, from 2000 to 2015, the suicide rate increased 27% among young adults aged 20 to 35
How is it possible that a world that travels at a never-experienced speed, a world full of choices and stimuli, a world where has been produced more data and contents in the last 10 years than in the rest of human being’s history suffers so high rates of DISENGAGEMENT starting by the early of the century?
I firmly believe that public and private companies should look at Clash of Clans and Candy Crash as models and, above all, rivals in terms of talent attraction, engagement centered design and knowledge transfer.
As you know, 50% of the workforce is now made by people born in the ’80 or after. Our younger generations, grew up during ((Generation Y) and born (Generation Z) after the 4th industrial revolution -symbolized by internet – are experiencing a short-circuit between their needs, dreams and ways of acting and the world (and the office) they live in. Pillars such as education, work and companies with their products and services are not more structured to fulfill our teenagers and young adults and let them to express completely their potential. And the challenge will still rise up in the next 5 years years when the first bunch of Gen Z will be hired by you.
Still now we live in a world thought at the beginning of the last century around different generations: top down, pyramidal, bureaucratic, inflexible, functional and with a standardized mass production.
In the last 5 years worldwide companies spent more than 1 trillion dollars in new websites, applications, social media strategies, updated loyalty programs, crm 2.0 with few or no results.
There is no more time, we have to deeply rethink our companies and, probably, even our social structures. Without engagement at the hearth, the survival challenge can not be won.
We all underestimate that even before money (36% of workers would give up $5,000 a year to be happier at work), time is the modern society’s gold asset and the most important KPI where every company should look at.
Looking at what happens every 60 seconds on internet, we have a clear picture of few companies that are monopolizing our time. One of the secrets behind the success of Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify is what I call “Engagement Centered Design”.
I spent the last years researching about the engagement topic and month ago finally I published a book, unfortunately only available in italian sorry, based on thousands of interviews. Against thousands of descriptions of objects and experiences, I discovered recurring patterns related to engagement.
Engagement is not something magical rather than something that can be scientifically planned and designed. Look at what happened in the last 40 years in the videogame industry, a complete new set of mechanics and dynamics has been tested and successful applied aimed to highlight the active role of the player. In my opinion the “Engagement Centered Design” is the process, Gamification is the operative tool.
Engagement is not technology or budget driven. The starting point is how to bring the individual at the center of the experience with his motivations, feelings and emotions.
Probably everyone in the room has been an engagement designer once in the life! As this image clearly shows, it is possible to stimulate behaviors by designing the same content (in this case the same amount of broccoli) within different shapes and colours (this is what I call in the book “engagement by attraction, sthe startin point of the engagement pyramid).
The american primary school professor Barry White Jr. is getting extraordinary results just introducing a personalized handshake every morning.
He understood on the field how important is, especially for the new generations, to establish meaningful and deep relationships between human beings or between brands and human beings. When we feel loved and unique we perform better, we become high spending users and we store what we learn in the long term memory.
The HealthStream study revealed that 79% of employees who leave their jobs report “lack of appreciation” as a key reason for leaving.
I have seen worldwide retailers using this principle delivering in-store products with a two hands gesture and it is enough to create a deeper loyalty than million dollars loyalty programs.
Imagine yourself as an internship librarian, your boss ask you to catalogue digitally 10.000 during your 6 months’ probation contract. It is going to be a boring experience and your productivity probably will drop day by day.
Imagine the same goal in that lapse of time organized in a game like environment:
– Progressive short and long-term goals: You break things down into these calibrated slices
– Multiple and varies activities
– Progress bars to tracks your effort
– Rewards
– Personalization
– Progressive learning curve
– Multitasking
– Real time feedback
– Unpredictable
– Freedom
– Bragging
-Game Over – learning by the failures