Human Resource (HR) technologies, despite being developed rapidly in recent years, has not been fully utilized in developing countries. Although many large companies are migrating into second generation technologies which include cloud-based solutions, medium and small sized companies are still are the stage of digitalizing their HR activities which include gamification. Gamification refers to the use of game machine and game to improve employees’ engagement in areas of skills development, recruitment, and employee training. However, the use of gamification in HR activities among manufacturing companies has not been examined and their readiness is not accurately gauged. Therefore, this study aimed to descriptively explore the current use of gamification in HR activities and selected manufacturing companies’ readiness to adopt gamification in HR activities. A total of thirty-two manufacturing companies participated upon selection of sample using purposive sampling. Technology Readiness Index (TRI) by Parasuranam (2000) was used to measure companies’ readiness to embrace gamification in their HR activities. Although majority of companies (56.3%) has never heard about gamification, 68.7% have the intention to implement gamification in their HR activities. It is found that the less the number of employees a company has, the less incline they are in the use of gamification. In terms of technology readiness, Insecurity has the highest mean of 3.63 followed by Optimism (M=3.54), Discomfort (M=3.38) and Innovativeness (M=3.26). Overall technology readiness index is 3.45 which is moderate. This finding contributes to our existing understanding on the extent of manufacturing companies’ readiness to use gamification in their HR activities.

Keywords
Gamification, Human resource activities, Manufacturing industry.

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Jin Yie Khor