Casinos and Collecting: The Unlikely Connection

I am often asked, “What does your company, Snowfly, do?“ I always respond, “We build on-line Casinos so employees can play games at work.” This always elicits the desired look of shock and disbelief. Then, when I list a name of well known corporate users, the questioner realizes I am serious and they ask, “How does it work?” The next response is invariably, “Wow, what a great concept! Where did you get the idea for letting people play games at work?”

The workplace game concept came from two sources. First there was the referred academic study I read while completing my doctoral dissertation. It was by Ed Pedalino and Victor Gamboa, who convinced a manufacturing company to reward good attendance with the opportunity to play a poker game for cash prizes. In the experimental group, each day employees came to work on time, they were allowed to choose a card from a deck of playing cards. At the end of the week, the highest poker hand won $20. Compared to the control group, this group showed a significant and long-term decrease in absenteeism; they out-performed the control group counterparts by 18 percent. The researcher had implemented a game at work and was using the behavior management principle of intermittent reinforcement.