When did it become OK to treat people as “resources?” As “human capital?” As “FTEs?” Or as one staffing firm calls them – “inventory?”

Best-selling author Rodd Wagner takes up the cause – and the benefit – of recognizing the humanity in people. In his book, Widgets, Wagner draws conclusions from his primary research on employees in the US and around the globe. He outlines 12 crucial imperatives for mending the unwritten social contract in the workplace.

At BI WORLDWIDE, we agree with the conclusions from Widgets and have adopted the “12 New Rules of Engagement” into our company culture. In embracing that cultural change, we sought a way to increase the New Rules awareness throughout our global organization.

First, we distributed signed copies of Widgets to every person in the company, free-of-charge, during a book launch party, which Rodd Wagner attended. Then, we wanted a fun and engaging way to reinforce the knowledge and culture from the book.

But we faced several challenges. BIW has more than 1, 000 people working in our 26 US offices and 14 global offices. We needed a way to reach the geographically dispersed audience in an engaging way that reinforced the principles from Widgets. At the same time, it was critical to measure both participation and what people were able to take away from the book.

The final challenge was reaching today’s busy professionals. People are overwhelmed, distracted and untethered. So we needed an approach that was quick and available whenever, and wherever, they might have a few minutes of down time.

The Solution

We chose Got !t, a mobile knowledge reinforcement and sales results solution from the BIW Learning & Engagement group., Powered by Qstream, Got !t is based on an interval reinforcement methodology developed at Harvard that uses neuroscience and game mechanics to help people retain knowledge and improve performance. Studies show that when users reinforce new information and skills with this approach, retention improves as much as 170%.

Like all good ideas, the basics are simple. Participants answer 2-3 Got !t questions a day using any smartphone, tablet or PC. Immediate feedback is provided and participants can see how they compare to their peers.

The key to Got !t is the “smart” interval spacing that “learns” what each individual knows or doesn’t know. Questions answered correctly multiple times in a row are retired from the pool, and questions that get missed reappear more frequently.

Got !t Solution

Writing good questions around the thought leadership of the New Rules of Engagement was the most important part of the process. So we turned to a BIW Learning Strategist who crafted a combination of factual questions and scenario-based questions. The addition of scenario questions enabled us to target the reader’s ability to apply the new knowledge; not just measure factual recall.

Twenty-eight questions were written – two for every chapter in the Widgets book – and entered into the intuitive Got !t cloud-based solution.

We started with a pilot where the questions were delivered to about a dozen people from Associate Resources (AR) and Learning. This was a critical phase of the project where some questions were edited and a few layout changes were addressed.

Finally, we rewarded people who were willing to participate in the program on a voluntary basis. Associate Resources sent an email to the general population, offering 50 points from our reward and recognition system for participating. Additionally, volunteer associates were entered into a sweepstakes for free airline tickets. At BIW, associates can save their points and then trade them for over 500, 000 different products -- everything from golf clubs to garden tools to flat screen TVs.

Got !t Results

Overall, participants rated Got !t very highly. The average ratings were 4.67 on a 5-star scale (5 being the highest).

The first finding surprised us. People performed better on scenario questions than the factual questions. They answered scenario questions correctly a higher percentage of the time, and they took fewer attempts to eventually get them correct. The difference wasn’t large, but it was statistically significant. This implies that, while specific facts from Widgets may be slightly more difficult to remember, the concepts are more easily recalled and applied to specific situations.

There were no statistical differences in responses based on employee tenure, position or location. However, there were definitely easier and more difficult concepts or “rules” from Widgets.

People performed the poorest when recalling and applying content from the chapter on the new rule “Unite Them.” And interestingly, they also struggled with the foundational concept of “Get Inside Their Heads.” For both chapters, respondents got fewer questions right on the first attempt and they also took more attempts to eventually get the answers correct.

Participants performed best on questions related to chapters “See Their Future” and “Make Them Fearless.” Both the frequency of the first answer correct and the number of attempts required to answer correctly showed the best performance for these chapters compared to all other content in Widgets.

Finally, two items appeared repeatedly in the free-form anecdotal feedback.

• Got !t questions helped readers learn from the book. This was best illustrated by the feedback, “The questions reinforced what I read in the book, and were very helpful in my retaining the lessons and key points in the book.”
• Some people would have preferred that the whole process moved more quickly – with more questions and smaller spaced intervals. However, others recognized the spaced intervals as part of the memory process.

Summary

We met our goal of increasing awareness of the New Rules of Engagement here at BIW. We concluded that Got !t was an excellent way to reach our geographically dispersed audience to reinforce key concepts. We loved the benefit of people being able to use whatever technology – PC, tablet or smartphone – they preferred.

We also concluded that:

• It was critical to include both scenario-based and simple factual recall questions.
• There is strong value in conducting a pilot with feedback before full rollout.
• The interval spacing methodology was seen as beneficial, but there was a preference to finish in a shorter amount of time.
• People performed better on applying the concepts than recalling specific facts, which would indicate a higher order of learning occurred.
• There were differences in the effectiveness of the responses on specific concepts in the book.

These findings and the detail data behind them are helpful as we continually work to adopt the New Rules culture here at BI WORLDWIDE.

About Peder Jacobsen