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Train and Motivate Employees While They Play Online

Employees are going to waste time online. It's nearly impossible to stop. So why not train and motivate them while they play?

March 21, 2004 -- Let's face it; employees are going to waste time "screwing around" online. But is there any way to turn that wasted time into something productive? That question led two friends, a computer programmer and a small business owner, to develop a unique, morale-building, training and productivity-boosting solution to the problem of employees wasting time online.

It's called WillWorkForFun.com.

At first, programmer Patrick McDonald and business owner Chris Munson conceived it as a way to channel the "fun in the workplace" craze into an ongoing team-building exercise, a way for employees to team up and compete in trivia contests for prizes. Then the light really came on for Pat and Chris. "What if," they asked themselves, "we include questions about company policies and procedures, new regulations, new products and services?" So they did, and the results have gone far beyond what either of them imagined.

A two-month test run at STEP, Inc., an agency that helps disabled people live more independently, has turned into a permanent and highly valuable part of the operation. STEP’s Executive Director Sue Dow says WillWorkForFun pays off in ways she and her staff never expected.

"The first thing we noticed was unexpected team-building among people who don't usually work together," Dow says. "We also find that new employees are oriented by their peers who hadn't done that sort of thing before. We developed questions about the agency that not only got new employees up to speed more quickly, but reminded those of us who've been here a long time about what we do and how we do it."

Dow says her concerns about staff wasting time on the contests turned out to be unfounded. Each employee is limited to five minutes per day on WillWorkForFun, "But we find that even just that five minutes has enhanced everyone's knowledge and made us more productive," Dow says.

Founding partner Patrick McDonald says the real power is in WillWorkForFun's design of daily training without drudgery. "It's a lot like kindergarten," McDonald says, "Employees get so involved in having fun that they don't even realize they're learning."