Workplace: The Game

Workplace: The Game was created for Workplace Systems, a cloud-based workforce management provider, to promote their staff management software. The real-life software solution relies on a Schedule Quality Rating (SQR) system for staff and is already used by many large organisations around the world. Workplace: The Game is a lovingly pixel perfect management sim.

Players assume the role of an operations manager in a fictional store. Your aim is to achieve five star SQRs whilst running an efficient store in order to turn a healthy profit. There are a large range of different staff with different abilities (and issues) that aim to select the real-life problems faced by store managers.

Being huge fans of classics like Little Computer People and modern equivalents such as Tiny Tower, we wanted to produce a distinctive unique game which was as fun to watch as it is to play. There are also quite a few staff members who share more than a passing resemblance to employees at Playerthree and Workplace.

The game is a simplified parody of the real life scheduling and forecasting modules of the WFM software and reflects a number of its features, including the ability to:

  • Measure the quality of schedules created against pre-determined KPIs with the five-star Schedule Quality Rating and challenging schedulers to publish only schedules with three stars or better
  • Respond to forecasting to generate an accurate overview of the labour hours required to ensure cost-effective and productive staffing deployment across the store estate
  • Select staff with the right skills to be in the right part of the store at the right time
  • Monitor working hours across all team members to ensure nobody is overworked or working costly overtime hours at a premium rate
  • Ensure that a suitable number of staff are present on the shop floor to meet the demand of busy footfall periods

Unfortunately the game is now offline as Workplace Systems was acquired by WorkForce Software in 2016.