My recent blogs on the concept of a Gamification Score as a more accurate measure for employee evaluation Part I and Part II have stirred some controversy. The disbelief came from the fear that people are not going to be measured properly or extensively enough, considering all dimensions of an individual. Of course this is a criticism that is valid and that is true for every score (of which I have mentioned many in the two blogs).

But fact is that the situation today in evaluating employee performance is even worse: there is no objective data available. Any data that can help is better than nothing. And while we claim in the corporate world for being rational beings and do what's good for business, we actually don't. We may be getting some facts right on the business and measuring many things with some success, but measuring employees is one of the dark spots. We may live in the illusion that we do, and we may even spend billions of dollars on measures, but most of them are inherently inaccurate. That's a design-flaw from the beginning.

This is why a gamification score is so interesting for every manager and HR department. There is the data; timely, precise, detailed, on the skills.

A great example of such a score comes from the SAP Community Network (SCN), where every month 2 million professionals engage, blog, and help each other, and in return are rewarded with points and badges. The SCN points and the status are indications of the members skills and professionalism, as Carter Lusher from the analyst group Ovum describes in his latest Case Study: Gamification at SAP Community Network:

A month ago business software maker SAP released the carpooling application SAP TwoGo. With this application, users can share rides to and from work. The cloud-based application, which can be accessed through the web, mobile devices, and even Outlook, allows commuters to offer rides on their cars or find rides. Instead of wasting time and gasoline and clogging the roads, carpoolers can network, save on fuel, and be more relaxed.

According to SAP’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Peter Graf, SAP employees have had access to over 36,000 carpools since the application was launched in July 2011, and avoided driving over 400,000 miles. In total carbon emissions were reduced by 88 tons. But it's not only the planet that profits from carpooling: SAP employees could networked an 2,200 days with each other just by taking rides together. And, according to Graf, SAP created over $5 million in additional value.

Martin Bråkenhielm, CEO and founder of BizPart Engage, gives his view of Gamification and share his journey for creating the world’s first out of the box Engagement Platform that as an example handles the Engagement Management for the resellers of the Nordic part of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world.

First it was Pong. Then Atari 2600. Later on I got my Commodore 64 with a tape station followed by the Amiga 500. I remember how in my earlier years I got hooked on video games. I disappeared into another world, determined to make it to the next level. I tried time and time again until I overcame the challenges. What I found most appealing was probably the strategic and tactical elements. I laid up a plan, trained hard and executed my strategy.

When I grew older it was sports that got my full attention. I dreamed of becoming a professional golfer and practiced 7 days a week, determined to make the dream come true. How game dynamics positively affected me was something I would take with me into my professional career.
Starting my own company was always the obvious choice. I was raised to look up to entrepreneurs as successful and independent visionaries. I set out to help people to realize the potential of cloud-based services and founded Alien Interactive in 1999. And my vision was bigger than that. I wanted to find a way to offer people what games had offered me; the enjoyment of motivation, determination and deep engagement. The word gamification was not yet heard of but I was fascinated by the thought of making an engaging game out of less exciting work-days. But over ten years ago, without the adoption of technology we see today, it was even harder for people to understand that idea than the potential of cloud services.

In the first part of this treatise we focused on how people and organizations are rated today through a variety of scores. This part focuses on the purpose and composition of a Gamification Score and why this is a more accurate measure to rate individuals and entities.

The Purpose of a Gamification Score

It should come as no surprise from what we have learned so far, that gamification data contains extremely valuable data. For organizations, for recruiters, and of course for the players, the value will be tremendous. By recording the players activities, achievements, and progression through the systems, finding the right player (read: employee or team member) for certain challenges (read: positions) becomes not only easier, but also more reliable. No need to trust references that cannot be verified anyways. No need to rely on résumés that can be total inventions. Even if some of the information in résumés can be checked from educational institutions (like graduation, grades, certifications), obtaining them may require effort – and as we’ve learned from a recent high-profile case – even CEO-candidates for internet-search behemoth Yahoo! were not properly vetted.

While I don’t want to downplay the importance of personality and chemistry between the people hiring and the potential new hire as a crucial criteria for how well they will probably go along, employers still want to base their decisions on better facts than are available today. And we know that we humans are innately biased when it comes to selecting. We are more likely to hire people that are more similar to us. That’s where a gamification score can serve as a better basis for making rational decisions.