The whys and hows of internal gaming

People play a lot of games now.

Whether it’s on their smartphones, tablets or home gaming consoles, video games, many of which have social components, are as popular as ever. Indeed, 71 percent of employed Americans play one kind of game or another for recreation.

“It’s familiar to them. It’s not something that’s hard to absorb,” says Allan Steinmetz, founder and CEO of Inward Strategic Consulting, a firm that makes internal-communications games for companies.

That, plus the rise of enterprise social tools, created an environment perfect for using games to communicate with employees, Steinmetz says. In mid-2011, Inward began working with clients to develop games.

“Clients did not come to us with, ‘I want a game,'” Steinmetz says. “Clients came to us with a challenge of, ‘How do we get our people engaged in a fun, collaborative way?’ Our response back to them, after doing our own research and brainstorming, was ‘Let’s gamify it.'”

Steinmetz and Inward Account Manager Whitney Cook answered some of the key questions about why using games for internal communication makes sense.

What’s the right business for this type of communication tool?