Turning entertainment into “Smart Entertainment”
The “Late Shift” assessment addresses the new challenges in the labor market. As employers in the US are struggling to fill 10 million jobs, rates for those who have quit and not returned to the workforce have reached historic levels. Many are opting for new jobs that offer something their current role doesn’t: a strong sense of engagement, meaningful accomplishment, high self-worth, and happiness. In taking stock of their careers, they may have found that their current work environment does not provide enough options to use their strengths as a team player, problem solver, organizer, analyzer, or influencer. They seek to apply a previously unused professional strength to a role that challenges them at just the right level and feeds their sense of self-worth.
For organizations, the exodus of long-term talent has created a resource vacuum that has been difficult to relieve. There is the usual pressure to hire the right person, but there is a smaller pool of people from which to choose. In that environment, assessing the qualities of a prospective employee is critical to success.
To help talents looking for just the right role, and the companies that hire them, ALEAS Sims, known for its Leadership Simulations and Game-based profiling technologies, has partnered with CtrlMovie, creators of the world’s first feature-length interactive movie, to bring you the “Late Shift” professional role assessment solution.
“Late Shift,” an exciting and highly polished movie, provides multiple potential plotlines based on selections made by the viewer. With time-pressured decisions and sometimes shockingly consequential, the experience is interactive and immersive. Because ALEAS Sims catalogs and analyzes the viewers’ selections, it can also indicate the viewer’s characteristics.
By the end of the movie, each viewer will have chosen their own adventure, and ALEAS algorithms will analyze the choices they’ve made. The viewer then receives a Personal Development Guide that describes their characteristics across five roles: Team Player, Problem Solver, Organizer, Analyzer, and Influencer. This guide is an excellent resource for people trying to discover what makes them happiest in their work.
For hiring managers who need to know if a prospective team member will be happy in an open position, the report provides insights to the viewer’s characteristics that will help to fit the person to the role.
Play to Your Strengths
We all want to be happy and fulfilled at work. Building organizations where employees are deeply engaged and intrinsically motivated and perform at their best depends mainly on people being matched to the right jobs and given growth opportunities. Career development centers at top business schools and talent acquisition professionals know the importance of matching a candidate’s most robust characteristics to their professional roles. Today’s fast-changing job market is essential for individual job satisfaction, career development, and business success.
It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows. ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The level of involvement and the degree to which employees are positively stretched at work depends on opportunities where they can play to their strengths and therefore want to do their best. This leads to optimal performance, which feeds increased intrinsic motivation to succeed, contributing to organizational productivity and profit. Research in peak performance tells us that “just right” challenges presented to workers with adequate skills create engagement and increase the optimal mental state known as Flow, which is characterized by high levels of job satisfaction, productivity, and intrinsic motivation to seek out more Flow.
In flow a person is challenged to do her best and must constantly improve her skills. ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Accurately identifying a person’s strengths has historically been difficult. Even if an assessment provides candidates with scenarios that closely mimic workplace dilemmas, we rely only on self-reported measures. With The “Late Shift,” the viewer is presented with time-pressured and consequential decision points that more actively indicate their core characteristics. Then, sophisticated people analytics measure context-specific, pressure-induced qualities and apply the results of predictive diagnostics to determine the traits of the viewer. These traits are categorized across the five roles and can help place people in the proper professional roles and plan for their future learning and development.
The “Late Shift” and your strengths
Determining your strengths is the first step to finding out what work processes make you happy.
Developed by applying the analytical engine from ALEAS Sims’ “FLIGBY” game to the “Late Shift” interactive movie, the professional role assessment entertains while gathering insights about you as you take your path through the experience.
This solution identifies individual strengths, as made visible through in-the-moment decision-making patterns. The unbiased nature of the skills-data-observations generated during gameplay enables accurate profiling of strengths and sources of intrinsic motivation.
The ALEAS team noticed that decision-making points present in situational challenges in the “Late Shift” storyline resonate with specific qualities today’s employers look for. A careful review of skills listed by career development centers at top business schools like Boston University, Harvard, and Purdue consistently points to essential qualities like teamwork, problem-solving, influencing, organizing, and analyzing.
When the validity of these clusters is based on well-established leadership theories, like those outlined by Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont University in his revolutionary book “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning” (2004), one can be sure that the reports generated through gameplay will represent the best of what modern leadership theory has to offer. ALEAS Sims have a long-standing record of delivering the best-in-class Leadership Simulations and Blended Learning Solutions that comprise sophisticated profiling mechanisms and are based on Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s expertise in measuring 29 Flow Leadership Skills.
What’s Next
Although “Late Shift,” a thriller, was initially designed for pure entertainment, ALEAS saw an opportunity to use it as an effective instrument for serious learning and development. Combining cinematic entertainment with game-based profiling will generate a unique report identifying professional roles to provide results in terms of dominant skill clusters and assess levels of motivation as reflected through speed, frequency, and consistency of decisions.
As a bonus, the report will also suggest how these skills can be optimized. Here ALEAS has consulted a senior talent acquisition professional, Marion Spears Karr, who has agreed to record video instructions explaining the results and providing guidance on utilizing them to maximize potential. The main objective will be to explain the fundamental behaviors related to the primary and secondary roles and what the given role represents in a corporate environment in terms of what organizations are looking for.
It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art. ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The “Late Shift” assessment is only the beginning of many potential applications of combining advanced interactive movies and game-based profiling technology. Their assessment capabilities promise more effective job placement and can also be used to outline steps for future learning and development. When used to their fullest potential, these new technologies can be harnessed toward creating unique work environments where employees are provided the opportunity to challenge their skills and do what they do best, where everyone gets to reap the benefits of higher productivity, greater job satisfaction, lower turnover, as well as more significant profit and customer satisfaction.
Sources
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) – Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2004) – Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. New York, NY: Penguin
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2020) – Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. Hachette UK
- Marer, P., Buzady, Z. & Vecsey, Z. (2017) – Missing Link Discovered. ALEAS Sims Hungary-USA (Publisher)
- Porter, E.H. (1973, 1996) – Relationship Awareness Theory. Manual of Administration and Interpretation. Carlsbad, CA: Personal Strengths Publishing, Inc.
