One Part Las Vegas Plus One Part Videogame=Motivated Employees!
Monday’s (June 19, 2006) Wall Street Journal ran a story on the latest in employee incentives — a kind of incentive/Las-Vegas type of game, which enables employees to win prizes of all kinds.
The game, named Snowfly, is according to the WSJ story, the brainchild of a professor at the U. of Wyoming, who realized that people love gaming. He figured out a way to create a game (actually, a series of similar games) that would be motivating to play and provide an incentive for employees.
From an incentives point of view, one of the difficulties that companies have experienced is that most incentives are only given out quarterly or annually. With Snowfly, incentives can be distributed on a much more frequent basis. From the demos shown,
it appears that people earn points or are given tokens, which they can then use to play the games.
Points earned from playing these games of chance (remember, Las Vegas) can then be redeemed for prizes. According to the WSJ article, the average game will win 10 points, but the total points earned may be as high as 5,000. So what is a point worth, you may ask….According to the WSJ story, the average company will value “a point at one cent.” So, the average game gives employees…..$.10 (10 cents). Doesn’t seem like much to me, but again, part of the incentive is playing a game of chance. And companies can make the points worth more.
Curious now? You can go to Snowfly’s website and try out some of the demo games yourself. Who knows — maybe this is what it will take your employees to get motivated!
