L E ADERS
GAME, CHANGE These companies are winning on employee engagement by bringing play into the workplace. You can, too. BY DALE BUSS UNITED NATURAL FOODS HAD A secret weapon in its $2.9 billion acquisition of SuperValu last year: a mobile-game app. The contest asked SuperValu workers multiple-choice questions about their new employer, such as, “About how many new items per month is UNFI first to market with?” Four options ranged from 500 to 10,000. The correct answer was 1,000. Those who answered questions correctly most often won points toward gift cards—and UNFI got better-informed new workers. “Setting up an environment of competing against others fuels the desire of employees to go out and learn,” says Jeremy Ford, vice president of people and change for the Providence, Rhode Island-based distributor. “A lot of it is just doing things
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in a novel and different way that they haven’t seen before.” There’s a difference between making work fun and making a game out of work. Fun is “Bring Your Pet to the Office Day” and factory-wide ping-pong tournaments. “Gamifying” work is integrating elements of play, competition and digital technology directly into jobs to engage employees, communicate effectively and save time and money—or all of the above. It can be turning information conveyance into a quiz, with leaderboards and prizes. It can be a software hackathon. It can be applying virtual-reality simulation to any training. And it can be war-gaming how to operate a new product—or how to run a machine tool that makes a new product. By any definition, gamification is hot.
