The Union of Insurance Employees in Finland (VVL) seeks to inform its members on the supervision of their interests at the workplace. Previously, this information was mainly provided through their website. But now the Union wanted to try something completely novel, so Edita implemented the Työelämän supersankarit (Superheroes of Work) mobile game for them.
”We wanted to try a wholly new way of making our members take an interest in the significance of their membership and the supervision of their interests at the workplace”, says Head of Education Sari Lassila of VVL.
The main innovation of the game is that it formulates the information into stories told through questions. It shares the information in a fun way and measures the player’s knowledge at the same time, with the best players getting their names on the leaderboard. Another purpose of the game is to highlight the importance of the work done by shop stewards. Superheroes of work gamifies the sharing and assimilation of information.
In the opinion of VVL, you can never talk enough about pay. The Union has regularly promoted public discussion on the matter and published a salary guide for employee representatives. Since everyone is interested in their salary, they decided to frame the issue in the shape of an approachable game.
”We want to involve all of our members in the discussion on this significant issue”, says Sari Lassila.
The game has also been noticed outside the Union.
The Superheroes of Work mobile game was built around the Team Action Zone engine. The content consists of stories told through videos compiled with the Powtoon program. The scripts for the animations were created collaboratively by Edita and the Union of Insurance Employees in Finland.
The Union feels that the game implemented by Edita has been useful in more than one way: in addition to educating the target group, the implementation of the game was an education for the Union itself.
”Writing the stories and thinking up quiz questions for the game also taught us to look at things from a different perspective.”
The game was built iteratively with Edita’s iterative method.
”This gamification project was a novel and fun experience for us and the customer both, because every case is unique”, says Business and Development Director Kalle Huhtala of Edita Publishing.
A key component in the project’s success was an active and enthusiastic customer that came up with plenty of ideas from its own environment. This fruitful collaboration resulted in a game that VVL hopes to use for a long time.
”The game is timeless, so we can keep promoting it in our communications on a regular basis”, Sari Lassila concludes.