Down at SXSW, I had the pleasure of connecting with several recruiting and HR types, sharing information and planning out our strategy for world domination. As usually happens after a conference, we all connected socially, and started sharing ideas and links.
One of the best ideas to come out of that was a site called Empire Avenue, a social network/stock market/social monitoring game site.
I Know, I know. Playing a game at work sounds like something only network techs and independent recruiters get to do. But it's not that. It's about combining all of the elements of what you're currently doing in social media into candidate and sales sourcing, and doing so in a manner that engages you. It's making work fun.
The idea behind gamification at work is to reward successful work strategies the same way that Nintendo or Xbox would reward game strategies. Pick up enough coins? You level up. Give out enough positive feedback? Level up at the work game. The list is endless. Show up to work at 8:00 for 30 days? Get a badge. Travel twice in a month? Get a badge. Taking the day-in and day-out normal work processes, many of which don't go any recognition, and making them automatic rewards turns out to be good for engagement, happiness, and productivity.
The parameters of the games are limited only by our imagination, and the business goals we are trying to achieve. For jobs where burnout comes quickly and learning is capped, games offer the opportunity to re-engage and make work more fun and less dreary. For other departments, like sales and recruiting, games offer ways to take KPI's and turn them into contests.
And that's just the internal stuff. From the outside, the growth of social games, from SCVNGR to Foursquare to sites like Empire Avenue, gives recruiters insights into candidates and their daily work habits.
Say you're looking for a salesperson that needs to be out on the road four days a week. Tracking their social profiles through a game network serves the same principle as using LinkedIn does for checking their resume. You can find out if they're really road warriors, if they get up early, and get on the road early, and even find out how they think and what they do. True, fancy check-ins aren't the sole way to make a decision, but a candidate with a social profile can give valuable information backing up your more formal processes.
I don't tend to make big pronouncements, and I'm not naive enough to think this will "fix" work or employment. It is a fantastic tool that we will start to see making an impact in how we look at work. And like social a few years ago, the winners will be those who figure out how to use social principles to enhance productivity.
Jim Durbin writes on the topics of recruiting, sales, and social business. He is a managing principal at Social Media Talent, a staffing firm for social business consulting. Follow him on Twitter at SMHeadhunter.
