Patent Application
20160260043
The typical business environment includes a number of employees who contribute their skills and knowledge to further the business. It is a goal of management to achieve a maximum productivity and efficiency by having each employee utilize their skills and knowledge to their fullest potential.
Traditional incentives and training programs have a number of shortcomings which provide challenges to management seeking to obtain maximum productivity and efficiency. Without personalization, transparence, and continuous feedback, employees can lose their motivational power. Typical strategies for management to increase productivity include periodic assessments, certification and learning programs, as well as public rewards of the most productive employees.
During the periodic assessments, the contributions of each employee are typically analyzed to determine potential rewards as bonuses and promotions. However, specific feedback is typically not communicated back to the employee for future development, and the assessments themselves are done sporadically. Certification and learning programs can become rote exercises and feel like extra work to the employees, and as a consequence the employees may lack engagement or become zoned out of the process. This can lead to management spending time and resources on expensive programs without changing employee behavior or making a difference in customer service.
Furthermore, the top employees may hold onto their knowledge rather than sharing it, thereby failing to utilize the company's full human potential. Additionally, the metrics used to rank employees often favor those experienced employees who learn how to game the system, and thus newer employees feel as though they are at a disadvantage. A newer employee feeling as though they are at a disadvantage may not buy in to the system, and as a consequence will likely not be as productive as possible.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide a system which provides specific feedback regarding employee performance, and also tracks employee performance over time. To increase motivation, the system should create a level playing field for all employees and also be engaging and fun. The system should not only reward the top performers, but also spur behaviors in all employees and thus enable lower performing employees to learn from the leaders.
Aspects of the present disclosure address at least the above-mentioned problems and/or disadvantages and provide at least the advantages described below. Accordingly, an aspect of the present disclosure involves systems, software, and computer-implemented methods for determining employee performance and providing employee learning.
The system may include an input module that is utilized to input assessment data related to performance metrics for an employee, utilizing the assessment data from a plurality of evaluators. The system may further include a scoring component that creates a score of the currently assessed employee through a normalized method. The system may also include a display component that allows viewing of an employee's evaluation.
The above and other aspects, features, and advantages of certain exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be more apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
The following description is provided to assist in a comprehensive understanding of exemplary embodiments of the invention as defined by the claims and their equivalents. It includes various specific details to assist in that understanding; however these specific details are to be regarded as merely exemplary. Accordingly, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that various changes and modifications of the embodiments described herein can be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
The present disclosure involves systems, software, and computer-implemented methods for determining employee performance and providing employee learning. A gamification engine is connected to a backend database which provides employee data. The gamification engine can gather the gamification data describing the users through a user interface (UI) clients infrastructure implemented in a business software environment. In some implementations, a user can access the business software environment, particularly, a computer system in the environment, using a client device such as an tablet device or a smart phone. When the user does so, the business software environment can present a user interface in the client device. Gamification logic can be executed in the user interface through which the gamification data can be collected and provided to the gamification engine.
The invention is operational with numerous other general purpose or special purpose computing system environments or configurations. Examples of well known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may be suitable for use with the invention include, but are not limited to, personal computers, hand-held or laptop devices, tablet devices, phone devices, programmable consumer electronics, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.
In one embodiment, a system is provided where employees in an organization are assigned a unique user id which is used to log into an interactive company-wide scoring portal. A back end gamification engine includes a continuous feed of employee performance data which is used to rank and assess the employees. The system in general facilitates a competition wherein employees are competing against fellow employees. The goal of each user is to earn points. In this embodiment, the person who scores the most points during a predetermined amount of time (such as a month) is determined as the winner. It can be appreciated that this system provides motivation for employees by creating a fun and interactive game for employees to compete in and enhance their overall productivity.
The system may include an input module that is utilized to input assessment data related to performance metrics for an employee, utilizing the assessment data from a plurality of evaluators. The system may further include a scoring component that creates a score of the currently assessed employee through a normalized method. The system may also include a display component that allows viewing of an employee's evaluation.
In one particular embodiment users score points by obtaining sales goals. The unique scoring mechanism comprises a normalized method wherein a user earns one point for every one percent of goal attainment across a plurality of scoring categories. For example, categories can be sales and margin data. In a particular embodiment, the categories are defined as sales in the following areas: Commercial, Residential, Parts, and Supplies. Users may also earn points across sales targets and margin targets. It can be appreciated that a variety of customizable categories may be provided to suit a particular type of business environment.
The scoring mechanism enables an even playing field for employees by basing the score on percentage increases. Thus, a new employee who may not have a huge amount of sales is not at a disadvantage against a more experienced employee who has already developed a large sales base. This scoring mechanism creates a level playing field by normalizing the scoring system.
The system may be set up such that a user is set up as a territory manager who is competing against other territory managers. The system may also contain a “commissioner” who is in charge of implementing the rules. In one embodiment, the commission is a supervisor in the organization.
The system can include communications forums such as a “chatter forum,” which allows various users to post competitive language, bluster, and other sorts of information. The system includes features such a posting, where posting can include filters based on the user. The system can also include a news page where sales manager can post interesting facts, sales, or to brag about individual performance.
The system may also include a performance scoreboard which provides information relating to (1) the ranking of each employee amongst others; (2) how each employee is performing in a plurality of performance metrics in relation to minimum standards, other employees, and/or the top performing employees; (3) what employees are in the top and what employees in the bottom as to each performance metric as well as overall; and/or (4) the level variance in performance amongst the employees. With this information, the organization may establish requisite levels of performance and take appropriate action to improve performance by underperforming employees.
The exemplary systems and methods illustrated herein may be described in terms of functional block components, screen shots, optional selections and various processing steps. It should be appreciated that such functional blocks may be realized by any number of hardware and/or software components configured to perform the specified functions. For example, the system may employ various integrated circuit components, e.g., memory elements, processing elements, logic elements, look-up tables, and the like, which may carry out a variety of functions under the control of one or more microprocessors or other control devices. Similarly, the software elements of the system may be implemented with any programming or scripting language such as C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, VBScript, Macromedia Cold Fusion, COBOL, Microsoft Active Server Pages, assembly, PERL, PHP, AWK, Python, Visual Basic, SQL Stored Procedures, PL/SQL, any UNIX shell script, and extensible markup language (XML) with the various algorithms being implemented with any combination of data structures, objects, processes, routines or other programming elements. Further, it should be noted that the system may employ any number of conventional techniques for data transmission, signaling, data processing, network control, and the like. Still further, the system could be used to detect or prevent security issues with a client-side scripting language, such as JavaScript, VBScript or the like.
The systems and methods of the present disclosure may be embodied as a customization of an existing system, an add-on product, a processing apparatus executing upgraded software, a stand alone system, a distributed system, a method, a data processing system, a device for data processing, and/or a computer program product. Accordingly, any portion of the system or a module may take the form of a processing apparatus executing code, an internet based embodiment, an entirely hardware embodiment, or an embodiment combining aspects of the internet, software and hardware. Furthermore, the system may take the form of a computer program product on a computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code means embodied in the storage medium. Any suitable computer-readable storage medium may be utilized, including hard disks, CD-ROM, optical storage devices, magnetic storage devices, and/or the like.
Although some of the screens illustrate a number of operations in a particular order, operations which are not order dependent may be reordered and other operations may be combined or broken out. While some reordering or other groupings are specifically mentioned, others will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art and so do not present an exhaustive list of alternatives. Moreover, it should be recognized that the stages could be implemented in hardware, firmware, software or any combination thereof.
The system and method is described herein with reference to screen shots, block diagrams and flowchart illustrations of methods, apparatus (e.g., systems), and computer program products according to various embodiments. It will be understood that each functional block of the block diagrams and the flowchart illustrations, and combinations of functional blocks in the block diagrams and flowchart illustrations, respectively, can be implemented by computer program instructions.
These computer program instructions may be loaded onto a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions that execute on the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus create means for implementing the functions specified in the flowchart block or blocks. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function specified in the flowchart block or blocks. The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer-implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the functions specified in the flowchart block or blocks.
Accordingly, functional blocks of the block diagrams and flowchart illustrations support combinations of means for performing the specified functions, combinations of steps for performing the specified functions, and program instruction means for performing the specified functions. It will also be understood that each functional block of the block diagrams and flowchart illustrations, and combinations of functional blocks in the block diagrams and flowchart illustrations, can be implemented by either special purpose hardware-based computer systems which perform the specified functions or steps, or suitable combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
The term “non-transitory” is to be understood to remove only propagating transitory signals per se from the claim scope and does not relinquish rights to all standard computer-readable media that are not only propagating transitory signals per se. Stated another way, the meaning of the term “non-transitory computer-readable medium” should be construed to exclude only those types of transitory computer-readable media which were found in In Re Nuijten to fall outside the scope of patentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §101.
Although the disclosure includes a method, it is contemplated that it may be embodied as computer program instructions on a tangible computer-readable carrier, such as a magnetic or optical memory or a magnetic or optical disk. All structural, chemical, and functional equivalents to the elements of the above-described exemplary embodiments that are known to those of ordinary skill in the art are expressly incorporated herein by reference and are intended to be encompassed by the present claims. Moreover, it is not necessary for a device or method to address each and every problem sought to be solved by the present disclosure, for it to be encompassed by the present claims. Furthermore, no element, component, or method step in the present disclosure is intended to be dedicated to the public regardless of whether the element, component, or method step is explicitly recited in the claims. No claim element herein is to be construed under the provisions of 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, unless the element is expressly recited using the phrase “means for.” As used herein, the terms “comprises”, “comprising”, or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.
Changes and modifications may be made to the disclosed embodiments without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. These and other changes or modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present disclosure, as expressed in the following claims.
