Moving on to the next exploration of sustainability games developed by SMU students during their SMU-X LTB 2023 module. We present “Green World”, which focuses on instilling green behavior and boosting understanding of sustainability strategy in employees to better further their voices in being more sustainable.
Define your Problem
Many firms today encounter challenges in ensuring their talents fully understand their sustainability strategy
- More than half of companies with a sustainability strategy fail to ensure employee understanding of strategy (Milanese et al., 2022)
- This results in Low employee motivation and buy-in toward firm’s goals (Biedenbach & Manzhynski, 2016) and a lack of involvement of employees when tackling sustainability-related work (Farri et al., 2022)
Determine your goals
Immediate Goals
1. Instill green behavior
- Nurture employees’ affiliation towards themes of sustainability
- Influence employees to start practising sustainability in their personal lives
2. Boost understanding of sustainability strategy
- Adequately equip employees with relevant knowledge regarding company’s sustainability
Long Term Goals
1. Align employee behaviour and values with companies’ sustainability vision
2. Empower and encourage employees to take on sustainability projects and to voice their opinions in the company
Decide your Target Behaviors
Desired Emotions
- “Last time, our firm’s sustainability plan was too complex for me to understand…”
- “I know right…so happy we are completely aligned now!”
- “I feel motivated to do well for our department!”
- “Sustainability is not as hard as I thought it was… we can do this!”
Real World Behaviors
- Employees to understand the company’s sustainability strategy and goals
- Employees to be inspired to think of ways to achieve sustainability goals
In-app Behaviors
- Motivated to compete with different departments
- Compelled towards completing challenges assigned to them
Describe and Profile your Players
About Janessa
A warm, caring and responsible employee working in the Hotel and Tourism Industry. She finds so much passion in serving customers/tourists to ensure they have a great time here in Singapore.
Janessa Ting
Demographics
- 45 years old (Gen X)
- Married with 2 children
Motivations
- Player type: Socializer & Explorer
- Strong department pride
Interests
- Ready to work together with the team
- Aware of sustainability but does not actively participate in it
Design your gamification Strategy
Narrative and Theme
Sustainability issues (Carboniss) are invading us, and we have to do our part to fight them off before we reach a point of no return. Organisations have a very big impact on sustainability, and employees themselves are key playing their part in this fight.
Raising awareness among employees by cultivating personal sustainable habits will equip them with adequate skills to approach sustainability issues. Aligning themselves with their company’s sustainability initiatives will help them understand how they can play their part at the organisational level. Encouraging active vigilance and advocacy will increase the overall impact companies can make. A personal and organisational fight can more effectively tackle sustainability issues.
Achievements
To motivate participants to continue playing and complete the game, awarding them with bonus points as the weeks progress and challenges get harder.
- Completed all Week 1 challenges: + 50 Points
- Completed all Week 2 challenges: + 70 Points
- Completed all Week 3 challenges: + 80 Points
Rewards
To drive recognise participants for their efforts, while driving both their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to do their best for the game.
- Tier 1: Sustainable Tourism Trip – The top team will be able to enjoy a relaxing trip while learning best sustainability practices from other organisations in their field
- Tier 2: Vouchers for sustainable products – Other runners-up will be encouraged to incorporate sustainable products into their lives such as through Food, Products and Fashion
- Certification of Achievement for all employees who completed the game to promote a sense of accomplishment
Diagnose and Analyse your content
20 participants were gathered to test out the game to gather feedback:
- Target Audience: Hotel & Tourism Employees, Hotel & Tourism Interns, Sustainability Major Interns
- Age: 25-60 Years Old
- Gender: 8 Males/ 12 Females
Quantitative Feedback
- How appealing is our introduction videos? 9.3/10
- How appealing are the challenges for you? 8.15/10
- Are the challenges/theme specific and consistent? 9.25/10
- Is there a good number of challenges? (i.e. not too little or too much) 7.65/10
- Does our game provide sufficient variety of learning format – such as Quiz, e-learning, video? 8.3/10
- How easy is the on-boarding (very first) challenge to complete? 8.05/10
- Are the challenges assisting you in better understanding the problem of carbon emissions? 8.85/10
- Do you now understand the company’s sustainability goals? 8.55/10
- How attractive are the rewards? 8.25/10
- How clear and frequent are the feedback? 8.85/10
- Are the feedback relevant to the objective/goals? 8.9/10
- Overall, how much do you enjoy our game? 8.8/10
Qualitative Feedback
The game was enjoyable, with many finding it very informative and appreciated the engaging aspects of it. However, some noted that the challenges were a bit too many.
Play Now
Credits: [AY2022/23] G3 Team 6 – Crystal Gan, Mierin Taniajura, Wee Pui Chong, Daniel Lai, Ng Shi Hui, Valencia Fortuna, Raeann Lee