The Employment Game
Developed for Kommunernes Landsforening & Center for Offentlig Kompetenceudvikling
The challenge
In 2014, job centres in 98 municipalities in Denmark were required to implement a new employment reform. In this connection, KL and COK held “jobCAMPS” for all the job centres’ management teams. They lacked a tool that could create an overview of the strategic and tactical possibilities that the reform contained.
The solution
We developed the simulation board game THE EMPLOYMENT GAME, where you are set to implement the employment reform in a fictional municipality. The leaders played together in their teams. In this way, they had the opportunity to gain experience and to see the direct consequences of the choices they made. After each jobCAMP, each job center’s management team was given a game to take home, so they could play with their own employees. It made it easier for managers to introduce the idea of the reform to their employees and to show the effects it would have on individual cases.
The result
The game proved to be an easy and interesting way to introduce employees to the reform, and the effect spread like wildfire. The job game was so well-functioning that in a number of municipalities, it has been played by the politicians in the employment committees.
