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In some companies, permitted computer gaming during working hours is intended to motivate employees – or prepare them for certain situations. But there are also risks.
“To prepare for a price negotiation, I sometimes sit down at the computer and play,” says Joachim Straßner, sales manager at the Ludwigshafen company Sun Chemical. This is what the employer wants because the games have been developed specifically for the employees. Straßner plays a salesman in a price negotiation. He gets to know his counterpart in a video.
As the game progresses, something unusual always happens. For example, the other person suddenly becomes loud or wants to break off the negotiations. Under time pressure, Straßner has to react and find the right answers in order to calm his virtual negotiating partner and ultimately come to an agreement with him. “It’s fun,” he says. “And I’m familiarizing myself with the situation and learning how best to deal with it.”
Fewer mistakes through playful learning?
“Gamification” – or gamification – is the name given to such attempts to use games to motivate employees to learn or perform better in their everyday work. “You can incorporate games into your everyday work in a variety of ways,” says Benedikt Morschheuser. He is a junior professor of business informatics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and is primarily concerned with “gamification”.
The playful elements could, for example, motivate employees to make fewer mistakes at work or to behave more sustainably, says Morschheuser. “It all depends on how the game is designed.” This ranges from working on the assembly line while blindfolded to complex computer games.
It’s also about fun and a good mood
Challenges and puzzle games are particularly popular. “It’s about making the activity more attractive. We use elements from games that motivate us. These are challenges, for example.”
Sun Chemical has decided to initially only use the games to train its employees. Employees should not be able to compare their sales figures directly. “We don’t want that kind of competition,” says Anna Herbst. She is responsible for “gamification” in the company. There are also lists of the best among salespeople. But teams compete against each other and not individual employees. “Team character is very important to us.”
Social pressure can demotivate
Social pressure is actually a risk of “gamification” in the world of work, says business information technology expert Morschheuser. “A competition can also be demotivating if someone sees, for example: ‘I won’t be as good as the others in this game anymore’.” But too much enthusiasm is not good either. “There is a danger that people allow themselves to be very strongly motivated and thereby overestimate their own limits or even accept health risks.” Companies must be aware of their ethical responsibility – also so that they do not unconsciously train their employees in a certain direction.
“We don’t want to manipulate our employees,” says Anna Herbst from Sun Chemical. “Still, we want to instill a certain mentality in our sales staff and teach them different sales strategies.”
“You’re learning in the moment”
The platform’s developer, Peter Kuntz, made sure to make the game situations entertaining but not unrealistic. “The re-enacted negotiation situations are all based on real stories from practice,” says Kuntz.
He developed the program specifically for the Ludwigshafen company. It is designed so that employees can play whenever they have time. “Some games you can play through in a few minutes. For others you have to work through learning material before you can solve the tasks.” These games make sense if, for example, the employee has to answer a specific customer query and needs to get further technical training. “You learn at the moment you need it,” explains Kuntz. This brings more to the players than “learning in advance”, in which a lot of learned knowledge is lost until it is needed.
voluntariness as Basic requirement
The biggest challenge with “gamification” is to sustainably inspire employees with the games. “Voluntariness plays an important role,” says gamification researcher Morschheuser. “Without voluntariness, play becomes work and not work becomes play.”
To do this, the game has to be continually developed to create new incentives. “It’s like normal computer games,” says Morschheuser. “Without regular new content, motivation decreases again after a few weeks or months.”
More “gamification” through artificial intelligence?
“At some point, gamification will be part of most companies,” says Morschheuser. “Computer games are already permeating society. For example, if I install an app to learn a new language, I automatically expect playful elements. I assume that expectations will also change in working life.”
The use of artificial intelligence could also provide a boost, suspects developer Kuntz. He wants to try to integrate AI into his programs, for example to better tailor the games to the individual player.
Morschheuser also sees an opportunity for games to make it easier to use AI. “Many people still find it difficult to integrate AI into their everyday work. Many people are also afraid of it. A playful approach could help people to work with AI and make the switch easier for them.”