Pokémon Go may have caught the gaming world by storm, but what has it to do with office training modules? Turns out, quite a bit.

The latest gaming fad is being harnessed by companies to get employees to walk around their premises, hunt down Pokémon characters, and in the process meet people across departments and learn a thing or two about the enterprise.

And while the Nintendo game is yet to launch in India, several companies in the country seem to think the game is more than just that.

“We are trying to use the popularity of Pokemon to help fresh recruits engage with the company and its culture,” says Sudhir Kulkarni, President-Digital at Persistent Systems, a mid-tier IT services company that employees more than 9,000 people. The game isn’t a revenue generation tool for the company just yet, but it does catch the attention of millennials, Kulkarni adds.

“You have to use the trends and fads in the industry, whatever catches youngsters’ fancy,” Kulkarni said.

Other large IT firms are also looking at using the game for training and hiring. “Gamification has been part of HR manual for a while now as it gives an insight into employee efficiency, social instincts and the ability to think quick. Pokemon Go adds a new dimension to this,” said an HR executive of a Mumbai-based IT firm.

Since its launch early this month Pokémon Go’s average usage time per user has surpassed popular social media apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat.

“Pokemon Go can be termed as Gamification of augmented reality (AR) technology. AR has good cases across engineering and manufacturing. AR also has strong use cases in education, learning, tourism, government, entertainment, healthcare, construction, military, logistics, retail, telecom, internet, etc. It opens up opportunities for Indian IT services firms,” said Pareekh Jain, Research Vice-President, Engineering Services, at HfS Research.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW