A brief study on our experience with implementing a mini-game at the workplace to influence behavior through incentivized, friendly competition.
Background
Our office works on a very tight contract. One way that we deal with our requirements is that we track and report on our work down to the quarter hour for reporting through two chains of management. There are a series of reporting conventions and standards that provide structure to the employees entries. Each week, each person submits their time with all projects and documents worked. The following week the manager and administrator go through the data manually and edit any mistakes before sending the report along.
The old model
Our old model involved an email with a cc: to every employee in our office listing all the "issues" from the previous weeks reporting. Corrections were requested and it also served as a note to avoid future mistakes. This worked alright except that people didn't really pay much attention to their reporting. Each week came with a new set of issues, no matter how hard we all tried. It was clear there wasn't much incentive to pay much attention to the report. The negativity was also palpable.
The new model
We designed a mini-game based on some ideas from The Great Game of Business. People love competition. Designing a "game" around relatively mundane or low priority tasks, with a reward for success, can drastically change outcomes. Local start business Zingerman's has implemented open book finance [1] and the mini-game model with great success [2] on everything from deliveries to the actual management of operations.
Our mini-game
We structured the game such that the "issues" email went only to the administrator who then worked individually with each person on correction. At the next staff meeting, the administrator revealed only the prior week's issues total. If there were no issues reported, our project manager brought in bagels for the office.
The results
Early on, there was a learning curve but very quickly the office got interested and began motivating one another to have a perfect report. Administrative time making corrections went down substantially. After a few successful bagel days, however, interest began to wane. The results covering the past year are below. The vertical line at 11/25/2013 represents implementation.
Next steps
A key learning is that the mini-game tool can be successful but needs monitoring itself to keep things fresh and keep people engaged. As a next step, we are targeting a new reward, something more social in nature, to reinvigorate the process.
