Gamification in HR Summit

I spent the early part of last week in Vienna attending and speaking at the Gamification in HR Summit. My slide deck can be found on slideshare. It was an interesting experience for the two days that I spent at Vienna, meeting gamification experts from multiple organizations.

The theme seemed to be strangely similar – each one spent their initial time within their organization fighting against odds to convince their Management to invest in the concept of gamification. Their journey and struggles in the process struck a common chord with all participants. Hopefully, going forward, gamification will have a better say in every organization.

While the implementation changed from strategic games to specific solutions for groups, Gamification is here to stay. The gamification initiatives can be divided into three categories:

1. External-focused – Initiatives for end-customers e.g. loyalty awards, customer support sites like that of Best Buy.
2. Internal-strategic – Initiatives like the one presented by Maarten Molenaar of Rabobank.
3. Internal-specific – Initiatives like the one presented by Guido Helmerhorst for KLM’s Onboarding process and Anthony Scarpino of Sodexo. The key message here was that Gamification was not about ‘gamification’.

The talks and conversations during the presentation were impressive given the stature of the speakers, providing all of us enough ammunition for new ideas. I am looking forward to the next year’s summit already!