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High Score, Low Pay: Why the Gig Economy Loves Gamification (theguardian.com)
Ostracus writes: Using ratings, competitions and bonuses to incentivise workers isn't new -- but as I found when I became a Lyft driver, the gig economy is taking it to another level. [...] The language of choice, freedom, and autonomy saturate discussions of ride hailing. "On-demand companies are pointing the way to a more promising future, where people have more freedom to choose when and where they work," Travis Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, wrote in October 2015. "Put simply" he continued, "the future of work is about independence and flexibility." In a certain sense, Kalanick is right. Unlike employees in a spatially fixed worksite (the factory, the office, the distribution centre), rideshare drivers are technically free to choose when they work, where they work and for how long. They are liberated from the constraining rhythms of conventional employment or shift work. But that apparent freedom poses a unique challenge to the platforms' need to provide reliable, "on demand" service to their riders -- and so a driver's freedom has to be aggressively, if subtly, managed. One of the main ways these companies have sought to do this is through the use of gamification.
Simply defined, gamification is the use of game elements -- point-scoring, levels, competition with others, measurable evidence of accomplishment, ratings and rules of play -- in non-game contexts. Games deliver an instantaneous, visceral experience of success and reward, and they are increasingly used in the workplace to promote emotional engagement with the work process, to increase workers' psychological investment in completing otherwise uninspiring tasks, and to influence, or "nudge," workers' behaviour. This is what my weekly feedback summary, my starred ratings and other gamified features of the Lyft app did. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that gamifying business operations has real, quantifiable effects. Target, the US-based retail giant, reports that gamifying its in-store checkout process has resulted in lower customer wait times and shorter lines. During checkout, a cashier's screen flashes green if items are scanned at an "optimum rate." If the cashier goes too slowly, the screen flashes red. Scores are logged and cashiers are expected to maintain an 88% green rating. In online communities for Target employees, cashiers compare scores, share techniques, and bemoan the game's most challenging obstacles.
Simply defined, gamification is the use of game elements -- point-scoring, levels, competition with others, measurable evidence of accomplishment, ratings and rules of play -- in non-game contexts. Games deliver an instantaneous, visceral experience of success and reward, and they are increasingly used in the workplace to promote emotional engagement with the work process, to increase workers' psychological investment in completing otherwise uninspiring tasks, and to influence, or "nudge," workers' behaviour. This is what my weekly feedback summary, my starred ratings and other gamified features of the Lyft app did. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that gamifying business operations has real, quantifiable effects. Target, the US-based retail giant, reports that gamifying its in-store checkout process has resulted in lower customer wait times and shorter lines. During checkout, a cashier's screen flashes green if items are scanned at an "optimum rate." If the cashier goes too slowly, the screen flashes red. Scores are logged and cashiers are expected to maintain an 88% green rating. In online communities for Target employees, cashiers compare scores, share techniques, and bemoan the game's most challenging obstacles.
there's a book about this phenomenon, called freakonomics. it has interesting economics questions like, "why do drug dealers live with their mums?", despite something like a 25% death rate, and the answer turns out to be that they earn LESS money than if they went and worked for macdonalds, but they are attracted to the POSSIBILITY of becoming the "Drug Overlord". the big boss.
also just as interestingly, the moment they get a serious girlfriend, the researcher found that they quit immediately and... went to work for macdonald's. which leaves me really, really concerned as to why and how lyft and uber drivers are being psychologicall hoodwinked....
Points and merits are cheaper than hard cash. Duh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The latter example with cashier work shows that gamification is fine, so long as the game goals are reasonably achievable and in alignment with the goals of the employees. I assume most of us want to do a meaningful work, but often the work is globally meaningful, but on a day-to-day level it can seem pointless, because the result is far removed from the worker. For example, programmers hate writing docs and tests, because those things will be used in the future by some unknown people. Even if the programmer can intellectually understand the significance of docs and tests, there is no emotional reward in doing those things, therefore it feels just pointless. No amount of pay raise can increase the meaningfulness of the work, but it can improve tolerance of the meaninglessness.
I am pretty sure this comment section will have ample of examples on how gamification is used to exploit people, so yeah, there are risks.
The problem with games is that you can create perverse incentives. You couple the game success elements with actual work goals and assume that people motivated to win game points will also wind up achieving the work goals. But if the rewards are tied to the game success elements (points, stars, etc) people often find out how to earn these elements without achieving the work goals.
I drove for Lyft for a short period of time .. interesting to say the least.
At least they are relying on their drivers desire to do a better job by constantly sending text messages, emails, in app popups to try and get drivers to never decline a trip, and chastising them with "it's better for the community" messages when they don't take trips or their ratings go down.
That's all well and good,except it flies in the face of the reality of driving for them, that is, only accepting trips that are close, only working high demand areas, only working when there's a fare multiplier in effect.
e.g. what's good for the company isn't necessarily good for the driver .. she is not an employee, yet they expect her to act like one.
The driver I had a few weeks ago had an electric car, he only drives a peak price times and knows which parts of the city to hang out in. He tracks everything on his lap top in Google docs and shares it with his group of friends. He works a little more than 35 hours a week but that work starts the moment he leaves his home. He starts slightly earlier than most commuters and ends later but has two long breaks in the day and is home when his kids finish school. As a new immigrant to Canada his profit was over 5k/month.