Kraft Heinz, one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, wanted a new way to introduce, inform, and assess cohorts on the company’s Student & Graduate Program.
A fully customized Escape Room game combined onboarding learning content with tailored teambuilding challenges, creating a unique branded experience. The game has been translated into multiple languages and integrated into onboarding programs worldwide.
Here’s how we tailored our gamification solutions to enhance the Onboarding experience for leaders and new hires at Kraft Heinz.
Project Objectives: Impress and Assess!
Kraft Heinz had a dual aim – to create a fully branded game that would create a good impression for new starters, and to incorporate assessment mechanisms to analyze graduates and trainee applicants.
How do they work in a team? How good is their Kraft Heinz brand knowledge? How do they respond to pressure situations?
Our games open up a wide range of possibilities for assessing team performance, putting players into unfamiliar peer-to-peer learning contexts and encouraging them to experiment with new types of collaboration with their colleagues. Designed to test a diverse range of skillsets, the varied team-based challenges provide a good indication of how different teams work together. A team who scores the highest points on the quickfire questions round might have demonstrated assertiveness, while the clues-based detective missions require a more strategic and collaborative approach.
This was an exciting brief – something a little different, and one that required a bespoke solution. To get an idea of a more familiar brief, check out some of the other projects in our case studies collection.
The Kraft Heinz Escape Room
A teambuilding escape room with a live dashboard provided the company’s global team of graduate cohort managers with the tools to both impress and assess their graduates.
We worked closely with the Kraft Heinz project team to tailor our escape room missions and storyline to the organizational learning objectives, incorporating a wide range of branded videos and marketing content.
Mission timers and “double jeopardy” rounds provided additional pressure, while a live dashboard enabled managers to track the progress of all active teams. With the games played online in video meetings, Kraft Heinz managers could also connect to the meetings or record the calls, enabling them to watch how participants interacted together.
The game was designed to provide a fast-paced teambuilding challenge, with missions tuned to a higher difficulty level and focused on testing collaboration, brand knowledge, and problem solving.
We created a number of fully customized missions, including a popular spot-the-difference challenge based on product labels by Kraft Heinz and its rivals.
Results
• The game was launched as a key part of the global Student & Graduate Program, connecting groups across international regions and departmental offices.
• Moderators and team leaders recommended the game for impressing new starters while providing an intuitive assessment tool.
• We created a series of translated versions for an international rollout led by regional managers, with over 1500 participants.
• The game achieved an evaluation rating of 4.8/5, based on 1308 ratings.
Testimonials
“During a feedback session with our CY21 trainees regarding the whole interview process of the Kraft Heinz International Management Trainee Program, the Escape Room session was selected as the most impressive part. It provides a unique way of identifying strong candidates, and participants really enjoyed it.”
Lucia Guan, Talent Acquisition Manager, Kraft Heinz China
“This is our first time playing the Escape Room game, and the candidates have a blast of fun! It delivers the objective – to assess leadership, problem solving, and teamwork, but in a fun way. The candidates feel that this is a really unique and engaging solution.”
Ivana Monica, Employer Branding Manager, Kraft Heinz Indonesia
Conclusion
The game continues to provide a unique welcome to new starters on a range of Kraft Heinz graduate programs around the world.
Built to impress and to assess, the Kraft Heinz Escape Room game provides a prime example of how strong branding and a skilful application of gamification mechanisms can create a powerful tool for HR leaders and other managers.
