The Need

For the last four years, the Corporate HR, L&D team at L&T has been hosting an annual business simulation competition for its employees – with the aim of helping them hone and sharpen critical workplace skills in a safe learning environment, where they can try, make mistakes, and learn along with having fun in learning. For this, usually they opted for one long, comprehensive simulation focused on a specific business need. However, this year, they wanted to try something different.

At the same time, L&T was exploring ideas on how to promote and popularize their newly launched Flogames library within the organization, as deep-down, the L&D team was convinced that simulated games were the new way of learning – both in terms of learning impact and effectiveness.  

A pan-L&T business simulation competition seemed like the perfect way to do so and thus was born a portmanteau called BIZATHON by joining two words “Business” and “Marathon”.

The Solution 

It was decided that the Flogames library would be used for the competition. Key decisions had to be made in the months leading up to the competition launch: 

1. Should we launch all the games or just a select few?  

It was decided to launch all the 60+ games that were available, so that participants could explore topics that were of interest and relevance to them. The games were categorized as per the organization’s competency framework, allowing for participants to focus on competencies that they wanted to build and strengthen. 

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2. How do we select the winners of the competition?

Three categories were finalized, based on the types of behaviours the organization wanted to encourage and reward:

It was also decided to recognize business units and their L&D teams who participated in the competition with enthusiasm and zeal.

Participant Touchpoints

Early in the discussions, the Flogames and L&T teams recognized that constant interaction with the participants was crucial for high participation and usage. Teasers were sent out before the start of the competition to create a sense of curiosity and excitement and encourage employees to register for the competition.

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A large-scale virtual launch event was held, with over 2000 of the registered participants in attendance. Senior leaders from L&T spoke about the importance of honing new skills and highlighted how the simulations on Flogames would provide a fun and safe way for them to practice these skills. All questions about the competition, the Flogames portal, the scoring and rewards criteria were also clarified during this call

Eye-catching emails were sent out on a daily basis, after the launch – highlighting the leaderboard, encouraging participation and driving everyone to keep going

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A close eye was kept on the data to analyze the profile of participants who had started playing and those who had not. This helped in sending mailers with target messaging to different groups, rather than trying a one-size fits all approach.

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The Impact

The competition ran for a 2-week period and was made open to all. It saw participation from 26 different departments. The team also made course corrections during the competition period to ensure more participation.  The response was tremendous.

• 1455 participants played at least one game
• A total of 47,072 game plays were seen in the two-week period (including re-attempts)
• On an average, participants played 32 games each
• About 180 participants (12% of the total) played all 68 games
• About 915 participants (62% of the total) chose to reattempt a game at least once to get a better score, with many participants playing a single game over 10 times
• On an average, participants reattempting a game improved their competency score by 44%

Beyond the numbers, it made a huge impact in establishing simulations as a permanent member in the learning ecosystem of the organisation.

Participant Feedback

Overall, participants rated their experience 4.6 out of 5. Verbatim feedback from participants suggested that they enjoyed this format of learning – finding it insightful, engaging and fun.

• “Interesting business scenarios. I made sure to replay to correct the mistakes I had made earlier.”
• “This is the first time I am playing games with so much engagement and learning.”
• “The exciting stories and sudden surprises along the way kept me going until I finished it all.”
• “Loved these games. I would love to play more games like this. Very easy way to learn.”
• “Exciting and simultaneously full of knowledge.”

For more ideas on how to run a similar competition using Flogames, please reach out to us at hello@flogames.co or call us at (+91)6366 236132