The ZIZO Effect

Ep 4 A New Perspective on Workforce Management 

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this enlightening episode of the ZIZO Effect podcast, join Andrew Reimers and Jimmy Chebat as they step beyond the usual topics of gamification to explore the changing world of workforce management. With a critical view on conventional methods, they examine why and how introducing gamified strategies is reshaping team and workplace dynamics. From analyzing traditional management techniques to the innovative potential of gamification, this episode is packed with insights on boosting productivity and morale. Learn about the impact of customizable dashboards, real-time leaderboards, and how turning work into a rewarding experience can transform your team. Whether you're a regular listener or new to the podcast, get ready to see employee engagement and management in a new light. It’s more than just game time—it’s time to transform the game.

Andrew Reimers:

Welcome to the ZIZO Effect podcast, your go-to for all things gamified. Today we're stepping back from our usual focus to look at something big, how we manage our teams and workplaces. Is it time for a new approach? We've seen what gamification can do. Now it's time to ask why it's shaking up the old ways of managing work. We're going to compare traditional management styles with new gamified strategies to see how we can make work better for everyone. Get ready, it's game time. Hello and welcome to the ZIZO Effect podcast. My name is Andrew J Reimers and I am by far the tallest person in my family.

Jimmy Chebat:

Wow, I'm Jimmy Chebat, co-host of the ZIZO Effect podcast, and I used to be the tallest in my family up until my son, Chase, decided to grow to over six foot two inches tall. He's a tall kid and, fun fact, the more you sleep, the more you grow, and he sleeps a lot, so it kind of gives the answer as to why he's so tall.

Andrew Reimers:

As you hopefully know by now, or maybe for those of you just tuning in for the first time, we like to kick off each episode with a game yes and that game is called Name The Game so we have some wonderful producers backstage Emma and Alex and the way this works, they are going to play a song from a video game. Now, we've been keeping track, right now the record, we both are tied at one one and one, so fresh game this is gonna be the one who takes the lead.

Andrew Reimers:

This is gonna be for the lead and just to show where we are. Uh, we want to thank you for all the support because now, thanks to you at home and thanks to you listening and watching, uh, we were able to get buzzers to uh add to the experience.

Jimmy Chebat:

This is just for us and then the audience at home will have a chance to pla round two yeah, but feel free to participate in this one as well if you guys can guess the song prior before we do.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah all right uh all right we're gonna do it.

Jimmy Chebat:

hand on the table and on the table okay, we're ready to go. Interesting.

Andrew Reimers:

It's a slow starting one. Go ahead. Halo, is it. Halo, it's halo, it's halo, wow, okay, that brings me back, so I don't know if he listens, but Jason Lamar, my cousin, that brings me back to the gaming days in our apartment.

Jimmy Chebat:

Holy smokes, I've never played the game, so that's why I'm unfamiliar.

Andrew Reimers:

Okay.

Jimmy Chebat:

But I know it's a very popular one.

Andrew Reimers:

It is yeah.

Jimmy Chebat:

Congratulations. You now have the lead. Wow, good job.

Andrew Reimers:

Thank you so much, unexpectedly. Who would have thought sitting around getting high and watching my cousin play video games would pay off down the road in 2024? But here we are.

Jimmy Chebat:

If you guys are at home smoking weed, playing video games, there is a future for you, according to Andrew there's benefits.

Andrew Reimers:

All right. Well, that is round one, but now we have to give a chance for our audience to play as well, and I know Alex, Emma have another song ready, and you can chime in on any of our socials, whether it be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or wherever you get your podcasts, that's right yes, and don't forget to check out our website, www. playzizo. com.

Jimmy Chebat:

You got it right this time. Good job, hey, I appreciate that. Nice, why don't you share the prize first? Right, it's something new. We've given away a couple hats, now we're. I mean, it's more apparel, more attire, so this one's unique. It's the opposite side of the body here. Go ahead and introduce it. It is not your head, but for your feet.

Andrew Reimers:

Opposi

Jimmy Chebat:

You know what? I didn't have any way to explain it.

Andrew Reimers:

Listen, you're right, but you're also wrong, okay.

Jimmy Chebat:

No.

Andrew Reimers:

Our audience at home has a chance to win some brand new socks. These 100% cotton one size fit most socks go with almost nothing in your wardrobe.

Jimmy Chebat:

And they can make up new ones pretty easily as well.

Andrew Reimers:

Let's go to round two of Name the Game.

Jimmy Chebat:

This one is unfamiliar to me. Oh, I know it, you know it, I do Okay.

Andrew Reimers:

Yep, yep. So I can tell you a little story about this. Speaking of family, it's funny how both songs have brought up memories of family. But I have siblings that are significantly younger than I am 10 years, 11 years, 14 year difference and you know they grew up also gaming, but they were gaming on N64. They were gaming on GameCube. They were playing games that I would watch, that were maybe a little young for me for my interests at that time, but this game I think we're going to get a lot of right answers because we had uh, I remember they had a lot of fun playing that game. I know it was very popular yeah, it's.

Jimmy Chebat:

You know, those are two of the platforms that I didn't really get into. I was definitely a nintendo, I did do the n64, but I think that's where my nintendo uh history kind of ended. I went from that, I think we I don't know where Sega Genesis, the Sega, then the Sega Genesis, but then we went to PlayStation and Xbox and you know, from there I never went back to Nintendo. Yeah, but they had the GameCube, they had the what's the Wii, the Wii U, Now they have the Switch.

Andrew Reimers:

The Switch, yeah, which we have, one of those at home that I really enjoy.

Jimmy Chebat:

Nice.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, Awesome. Well, let's let our audience know again. They can post in the comments on any of our socials if they want, wherever they get their podcasts, and we will pick from the correct answers and we'll have a drawing and see who can win these fantastic 80% cotton socks.

Jimmy Chebat:

Nice that we've got the percentages correct. Don't want to lie. Nope, don't want to lie.

Andrew Reimers:

All right, jimmy, but let's get to why we're here. As always, we love to have fun at the beginning, but we also want to talk business and let's turn our attention to the workplace. So, you know, let's start with from your experience, from what you've seen, what are some of the outdated management tools that you've encountered and that we've encountered, you know, in some of our research with businesses nowadays, yeah, and you know you'll hear me say this a lot to a lot of our customers, our prospects and people that we talk to, regarding gamification and really how it's modernizing workforce management, right.

Jimmy Chebat:

So modernizing something means that what's currently happening is become outdated, and you know it's not just tools but it's just kind of the way to look at work. Nine to five workdays right, you know those are almost a thing of the past, especially with the latest trends of people working from home. You know, due to COVID and you know now, even post COVID, it's hybrid it's hard to bring everybody back to the office. So, you know you may wake up in the morning, take your kids to school, you know. Come back home, make yourself something to eat, get on your computer and your workday may go all the way right before you go to bed. Even so, no more nine to five.

Jimmy Chebat:

You know annual reviews that's something that's happening more frequently or even less frequently. You know the review process, I think, is requiring more feedback. I think the younger generation or the newer workforce wants to know how they're doing and how they can improve. I think micromanagement was something that was physically done, with somebody literally looking over your shoulder making sure that you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing. That's been outdated for a while.

Andrew Reimers:

People don't love to be micromanaged, however there are tools out there, including ZIZO, that give you a lot of information where people are starting to kind of micro not necessarily manage, but at least analyze their own work and their own work output, quietly micromanaging. Yeah, behind the scenes micromanaging, but not so much over your shoulder, in your face.

Jimmy Chebat:

Exactly. I think there's enough data in this world now that you can really get pretty granular with some of the information. And what you do with that information, I think, is going to be the important part of the modernization efforts.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, you know you're right and we are going to get deeper into that. You know, and with all these outdated practices that we've seen still in play in some of the research that we've done, you know what, I guess. My question for you then, jimmy, is what's driving the push for modernization?

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I think there's some very new challenges right that are occurring in this world, in this modern workforce, in this modern workplace. We've touched upon some of the reasons for attrition in the past episodes. We talked about the younger generation, Gen Z, entering the workforce. We talked about the new workplace. We just touched on it. Right now it's people are working from home. It's a new era in kind of like the human psychology. People, I think, want to be engaged and you know that's one of the biggest challenges you hear is, not only is it about attrition and performance, but it really kind of boils down to, maybe, engagement, right, and I think that's one of the things that we have touched upon. And you know, we went out and did some research. Right, We've done a ton of research, but we really wanted to touch base with individuals and businesses here locally, and I know that you've talked to several people.

Andrew Reimers:

I did. I was thankfully able to use my network. It's, you know, it's. It's great to look at some of the conversations I was able to have because they were with people that I've done some pretty sketchy stuff with over the years. But you know, it's rock and roll, lifestyle and all that you know, and now we're talking sales. Now we're talking, you know, restaurant industry and and uh. But uh, let's start with sales. I spoke with a friend of mine, uh, who is uh in the sales department there, and a lot of the unique challenges he talked about is everything you were just saying. With the hybrid work environment, it's hard because people figured out that they can still work from home and, like you mentioned, can work on their own schedule. They can work around what they need to be done. However, it creates organizational sort of that and it's hard to have a culture. It's hard to be feel like you're a part of a team and that's something where it maintaining the team cohesion is nearly impossible.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, in this setting and physically move desks around as well as people to manage what we would call energy. Right, because there are certain people that may conflict with one another and you want to separate them. And there are certain people that you want to leverage their talents and their skill sets and put them next to maybe some newbies and help them learn just by almost osmosis, right, hearing and listening to what the other person is saying, and then you would hope to become kind of mentor protege relationship, but you know, or two people that are just overly talkative and not productive at all, that you'd have to separate. But you don't have that anymore, right, everybody is on an island, right, and how do you communicate? Right? And so you had talked to your colleague in this space and it's a pretty big technical firm. This is a global company.

Andrew Reimers:

It is. Yeah, you know, and again, you need challenges. You said the word communication and that was something, and this isn't the first time it's going to be brought up, nor is it the last time it's going to be brought up. The younger workforce, Gen Z, younger millennials, and the need to adapt your communication. With a new workforce, there's different expectations around what they want from their job. You say it all the time they want to be communicated with, but they don't want to be talked to. You say it all the time they want to be communicated with, but they don't want to be talked to.

Andrew Reimers:

That's not a bad thing, it's just different than what our generation was used to growing up. But modernization efforts that were going on in this department as well, just in terms of even the CRM that they use and workday for you know, time, attendance, uh, performance, things of that nature. But they are starting to get in the gamification world. They just need a little bit help to get there. They use the example they give out tickets to go see drake, like, and it was a big competition that went on. It was a month-long competition, competition and it made people excited. It made people engaged and that's fine for the short term, that's okay. There was a recognition system, a reward system that they're starting to put the pieces together. You could tell and you could tell the excitement around that and I swear I could have sat and talked to them for three hours about like well, here's where you go next.

Jimmy Chebat:

But we didn't have that kind of time and we're going to dive a little deeper into, I think, our next episode of do's and don'ts of gamification. But yet there is inherent cultures, or that there are certain cultures that are inherently gamified, right. So sales is a big one. There's a lot of competition inherently with individuals. Everybody wants to be the best, some of them think they're the best, and there's usually competitions that are put in place to help promote, you know, performance and productivity and at the same time, trying to create that healthy competition. Doesn't always work that way, but again, we will get into that later. But I know that those are some of the things that the sales team was doing. What about restaurants?

Andrew Reimers:

Yep, I reached out to another friend of mine who owns a local restaurant here in Buffalo and the number one thing he said again it was the communication adjustments. Now he's also our age and this is his first time as an owner and he you know you talk about your sort of rude awakening you had when you got into the call center space in the culture shock that you experienced, and he experienced that as well, and that involved again switching communication styles with the younger employees who prefer texting over talking. Now, like when I was younger and my boss called me, you know, my first instinct was oh shit, what did I do?

Jimmy Chebat:

What voice am I putting on?

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, but the next thing I did was pick up the phone and go hello, yeah, how's it going? You know, nowadays you can't get people on the phone, so you have to adjust your ways of communicating. You know the restaurant industry is interesting because we talk a lot about incentivizing people. They work for tips, so you can't just necessarily create competitions you know you could, but you can still take elements of gamification. Like, they have a leaderboard that they put in so they keep track of who's actually the top server. They know exactly who's at the bottom too. You know all that transparency, the things that were around even when you created eWhiteboard, and I remember experiencing that and knowing you know that that made a big difference, that you want to be on top of that leaderboard and then finding new ways to engage the employees and help build that culture.

Andrew Reimers:

Now listen, he had some outside of the box ideas. I'm not saying that I necessarily condone or agree with them, but you know they offer when you're done with your shift, you get two free drinks and that's to stick around, hang out with your work family, get to know them a little bit more, and what that does is drive, because drives more business, because when you have that culture, you know, and that's what really where his focus was those people that are staying for the two drinks are saying to their friends hey, I'm over, why don't you come meet me here? And then it becomes a party. They also have a weed drawer that people are encouraged to participate If it's going to help keep them calm, help keep them cool, help keep them engaged at their job. They're allowed to take the occasional smoke break and it's provided by the restaurant, which I thought was interesting.

Jimmy Chebat:

Just a quick note recreational marijuana is legal in.

Andrew Reimers:

New York State. Oh yeah, when nobody's doing anything illegal no.

Jimmy Chebat:

But in cultivating a supportive culture, building camaraderie, I mean, I think that's an important part of almost every business right, making people feel like they have a sense of belonging. You know a sense of family and unity, and in some environments it's easier to do than in others. Restaurants, when you're combining, you know, alcohol and some Mary Jane, you know you're going to get a little bit more open and free and people are a little bit happier in that in that setting. But when you go to an orthodontics office, it's very specialized right.

Jimmy Chebat:

There's different functions there that go from sales to customer support, and you know, manufacturing, manufacturing you know, that's a very different environment. I don't think you can offer weed in that environment.

Andrew Reimers:

No, you can't, it doesn't work there. And I was able to speak with one of their owners at ODL, tom Wright, who, again you know I'm not going to beat this dead horse here Communication with the younger generation was at the top of his list of unique challenges, you know, and he took a very nuanced approach to communicating with those younger people and developing relationships with them, on from an owner to a frontline worker level and making sure that he had the interpersonal relationships and he gets to know them and, you know, to get them invested, to get them engaged with the company. One point that he brought up that I found really interesting, because it's something I could relate to, was he addressed burnout. Now, there's different reasons for burnout. There's different causes. I can tell you that I felt burnt out with jobs in the past where it was just it wasn't that the job itself was a negative setting, but the job I was doing was very negative. It was a call center and after a couple of years I just couldn't do it anymore.

Andrew Reimers:

And and you know, it doesn't necessarily always have to be due to overwork. Sometimes it can just be the nice person in the office that everybody loves to come to to vent about all their own problems and that can cause burnout, you know. And just keeping your pulse on the culture, on the emotions of your staff, you know. And then really again in that repetitive work, trying to maintain engagement, like keeping a frontline workers. You know, at ODL they have wire benders for braces and it's still you do it by hand. You have to have great dexterity. You have to take a test in order to even qualify to get this job. It's very, very specific what you have to do. And how do you keep people motivated? How do you keep them excited? Well, they started to implement an incentive program where they were able to get a certain amount of appliances done in X amount of time and they got another little reward and they got a bonus.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I think that's an important part and we talk about feedback loops, right, I think. Going back to your point about the emotional component, I think we're very hyper aware of mental health and, you know, mental awareness and making sure that our people are mentally healthy, right, and that work isn't contributing negatively to that. And I think that's one of the unique challenges that we have today and another reason for modernizing right In the past, nobody really cared how you felt, right, they didn't care what you were going through personally, they didn't care what was happening at home. Just leave that at the door and then come in here and do your job and then don't take your work home with you either. Just, you know some people want you to take the work home.

Jimmy Chebat:

But, yeah, you know, our, our organization always was, you know, hey, you leave work at the door, go enjoy your family and your life. But, you know, going through all three of those, you know the challenges seem to be all very much related. It's a new generation, a new form of communication, being aware of mental health and burnout, maintaining engagement right, I think that's the common thread is how do we engage our staff? You know, the restaurant owner provided kind of a social setting, you know, for them to feel comfortable, to be themselves and enjoy life and have a drink or two, amongst other things. You know, odl, you talked about the owner personally getting to know each and every one of his staff members. That's a different form of gamification, that's personalization right Him, making them feel like there's a sense of community and they have a purpose and a place.

Andrew Reimers:

I would even argue not making them feel like there is, but showing them that there is.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yes, yeah, you have to. It can't be just marketing material up on a posterized on all over. You have to actually do. You know the culture building, but it goes beyond that. You know some of the incentive programs. You know the recognition, the rewards. That's where I think a lot of people are taking an effort to provide. You know a form of recognition and rewards. And that ties back into our main subject of gamification.

Andrew Reimers:

It absolutely does. And through our research and through our conversations, one thing was clear. It was the leaders in all these organizations know that change is necessary, but they're obviously still in the process of trying to figure it out. My question then for you would be still in the process of trying to figure it out? My question then for you would be is there a single real answer to their problems?

Jimmy Chebat:

Well, I think I had said it just a moment ago that the common thread is engagement. Now, whether or not there's a single solution to that is still yet to be seen. You know, engagement seems to be the buzzword, but you know, if you want to kind of break it down and you know, answer the question, what is engagement right? So there is a definition. There's a technical definition that I think is fairly comprehensive and it's essentially employee. Engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward the organization that they work for, their team and their work. It's about how emotionally invested employees are in their work and the organization's goals. That's the definition.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, makes sense to me.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, now I like to simplify it and I think that it's a way to retain and care for their job, retain attention and so that they care for their job. And it goes beyond just the emotional investment. Right, I think nowadays could be a starting point and a way in, but it goes beyond just that.

Andrew Reimers:

Yeah, but engagement is so important and I thought it would be kind of fun to go through and just to inform our audience a little bit about some of the creative ways companies are trying to boost engagement amongst their employees, and I'd like to talk about a few of those and then maybe get into why they might be. I don't know more of a short-term fix. Let's start with team lunches.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, again, very similar to your restaurant owner friend is having drinks right, it's building a community. Having people come together and get to know each other right, break bread together is one of the best ways to get to know each other. But what winds up happening? Clicks form. It's almost like a high school cafeteria, right, depending on the size of the group, I mean, it could be smaller, it's more intimate, but if you've got a large group, people start to break off and create clicks, and that's something that we try to avoid in our, in our call center. But, um, friday happy hour is another one, right, it's. It's another form of hey, loosen up, uh, let your hair down and go out. There's some sometimes. That could be a liability, right, if you got that one person. That goes a little bit too far with drinking, but it's also a liability.

Andrew Reimers:

It brings me back to a baseball game in 2011 that you treated us to.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah.

Andrew Reimers:

And I somehow woke up on Danny Cabret's floor the next morning. But I digress.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, there was some fun parties that we had, and you have to balance it out right. You got to again the liability of you don't want people drinking and driving uh, you know, office parties are the same thing. You don't want people embarrassing themselves. It'd be hard to come back to work after that, um, but you know, snacks and coffee in the office, flexible work hours there was a trend, uh, that people and again, this is a way to attract talent and to get them in the door so they can want to come and work for you but unlimited PTO have you heard about this one? No, yeah, and look, I think the intent is good. I think what they're trying to say is look here, we know that life, work we'll call it balance is important to most people, and they say we trust you yeah, but it's an honor system, you know like it.

Jimmy Chebat:

I don't think it lasted very. Yeah, I don't think so. No, I. And part of the reason is you know you'd get some people that would take full advantage of it and would argue that it's unlimited, pto. Why would you offer that if it's truly, if it's not truly unlimited and you have some people that are just you know they've got, they care about their work, they care about their jobs, and when they see other colleagues not coming to work because of this, then they start taking advantage of it and productivity overall starts to go down. So, but there's a lot of other, as you mentioned, short-term solutions to try to build engagement and I put that in air quotes. But it's not a full-scale solution.

Andrew Reimers:

No, you're right and I love the way you put it where there's certain things that people do to try to drive engagement that maybe, like you said, attract people and get them in the door. But what can we actually do to truly engage the workforce long-term?

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah Well, I mean, we already hear whispers of it in management tactics from our research. You know the things that you talked about, but trends like real-time feedback, rewards and recognition, all of the elements that you just mentioned in there are all elements of gamification, but gamification has to be done right. It can also be done wrong.

Andrew Reimers:

Shocker to our audience at home. Gamification is going to be the answer to all your problems.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, what is the name of our podcast again?

Andrew Reimers:

Oh, the ZIZO Effect podcast.

Jimmy Chebat:

Oh, what is the tagline?

Andrew Reimers:

It the uh tagline, and it is game time so so gamification appears to be our answer, but you said if done correctly yeah it's.

Jimmy Chebat:

I mean this is going to be a pretty long episode. We can dive into so many different ways where it's right and wrong and I I don't, you know, I'll tease it here, but there's it could go wrong pretty quickly and it could be counterproductive, and so I'm excited to share a lot of that in our next episode. Me too.

Andrew Reimers:

Can't wait, and so we close out today's episode. Having journeyed from the well-worn paths of traditional management to the uncharted territories of gamification, it's a new beginning for workplace management and engagement. Next week, we're lining up the crucial do's and don'ts of gamification. It's the actionable insight you've been looking for to successfully navigate this new landscape. Ready to gamify your workplace or just want to learn more? You're in the right place. Playing the game is just the beginning. Mastering it is where we're headed. Get ready, it's game time.

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Andrew Reimers

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Jimmy Chebat

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