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XOXODAY: SOLVING THE CONUNDRUM OF GAMIFICATION AND
WELL-BEING
Mohammad Bilal and Jyotsna Bhatnagar from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India, wrote this case solely to provide
material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation.
The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality.
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Copyright © 2023, Management Development Institute Gurgaon and Ivey Business School Foundation
Version: 2023-03-28
During her morning run, Mary Madhavi Reddy felt the chill of the Bengaluru air in her hair as she mentally
prepared for an upcoming work meeting. It was November 15, 2021, and Reddy was the new marketing head
for the recent Empuls product line for Nreach Online Services Private Limited (doing business as Xoxoday),
a technology solutions company located in Bengaluru, in southern India. As Reddy pondered how the scope
of service offerings in Empuls could be enhanced, it dawned on her that her team had to find meaningful
solutions to engage employees in activities that would ensure their physical and emotional well-being in
remote working positions. She wondered whether Xoxoday should implement gamification—a technology
solution based on artificial intelligence (AI)—to add interactive game mechanics to the online environment.
As Reddy checked the step count on her Fitbit, she thought about the double-edged sword of gamification and
AI, the dark sides of which had been researched and reported in the media.1 Would a gamification and AI
solution really drive well-being behaviours and reduce attrition among Xoxoday’s clients’ workforces?
XOXODAY:THE BACKDROP
Reddy had joined Xoxoday on March 7, 2021, and since then had been actively looking for ways to enhance
her visibility in what she found to be a fiercely competitive work environment. Xoxoday, previously known
as Giftxoxo, was incorporated in 2018. Giftxoxo had been a supplier of gifts to corporate entities, for
distribution among employees and clients. After starting operations in 2012, Giftxoxo had gradually built
a sizable client base of more than one thousand corporate entities across India, Southeast Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, and the United States. As a logical progression in the business’s life cycle, Giftxoxo’s
leadership was keen to capitalize on the massive wave of digital transformation sweeping across industries
as well as Giftxoxo’s huge base of corporate clients; thus, Xoxoday was born.
Xoxoday’s core business was to build technology-based infrastructure for companies to reward and
incentivize as well as disburse payouts and perks to customers, employees, and partners. The company was
1
Stanford University, Gathering Strength, Gathering Storms: The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) 2021
Study Panel Report, September 2021, https://ai100.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj18871/files/media/file/AI100Report_MT_10.pdf;
Madhavi Gundavajyala, “Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Technologies,” AI Tools, February 13, 2023, https://mindmajix.com/artificialintelligence-technologies; Marcus Law, ”Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in 2022,” AI Magazine, September 20, 2022,
https://aimagazine.com/top10/top-10-artificial-intelligence-companies-in-2022.
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headquartered in Bengaluru, the capital city of Karnataka state, in southern India, famously known as the
Silicon Valley of India. In its first year of existence, the company generated a turnover of US$13.5million.2
By 2021, Xoxoday had more than one thousand clients who used its technology to run their rewards programs
for about two million end-users. It had already made its mark in the rapidly growing digital rewards and
incentives industry. In 2021, Forrester Research Inc., a leading global market research company, had
recognized Xoxoday as one of the top channel incentives management platforms.3 Xoxoday was also ranked
twentieth in Deloitte’s list of growing technology companies in 2020.4 After rocketing growth since its
inception, it was now targeting the payouts, rewards, and incentives industry, which was valued at $1 trillion
and was mainly still driven by manual efforts or by legacy systems. This market had been growing at a rapid
pace and was slated to reach $1.9 trillion by 2027. Xoxoday had been able to create a sizable suite of reward,
recognition, and motivation products for (1) workforces, (2) customers and channel partners, and (3) sales
teams. The product lines for these three target groups were named Empuls, Plum, and Compass, respectively.
Xoxoday’s Empuls, a multi-faceted employee engagement platform, enabled organizations to engage
employees working remotely through reward and recognition points, networking opportunities, fitness
resources, and volunteer opportunities. Employee engagement had already been a focus area before
COVID-19, but it had gained even more importance during the pandemic. Empuls empowered human
resources (HR), employees, leaders, and managers to build highly engaged and productive teams. It
included a wide variety of workforce-oriented features, such as a reward and recognition system, social
intranet, and surveys, and was aimed at enabling peer connection and collaboration, empowering people to
seek and share feedback, boosting morale, aligning everyone to company values and goals, fostering a
culture of continuous learning and upskilling, and promoting physical, mental, and financial well-being.
Additionally, the Empuls platform enabled users to recognize their team members, who could earn points
and then redeem them through gift vouchers and experiences.
THE ASK
On November 5, 2021, the opportunity to make a mark had knocked on Reddy’s door in the form of a
WhatsApp message from Mayank Singh, Empuls’s product head, asking her for a convenient time they
could meet the following day with Naz Parveen, head of customer service.
During their Zoom meeting the next day, Parveen spoke about the priority areas that she had come to know
of during her recent meetings with several of Empuls’s clients, some of which were among the platform’s
top ten sources of revenue.
Right from the outset of Empuls’s operations, the founding entrepreneurial leadership had emphasized the
need for cross-functional teams to work in a close-knit and collaborative manner so that any opportunities
for synergy could be unlocked as early as possible. Doing so also enabled teams to position themselves
strongly toward unified goals. As such, the customer service, products, and marketings heads met regularly,
and the current meeting was one example of this.
The three heads started brainstorming potential solutions for the well-being and attrition issues highlighted
by their clients. While having an animated back and forth conversation with Parveen, Reddy noticed that
Singh appeared deep in thought. After a few seconds, Singh nearly jumped out of his chair to say that
2
All dollar amounts are in US dollars.
Mohit Bansal, “Xoxoday Featured in the Forrester’s Channel Software Tech Stack Report 2021,” Xoxoday, accessed June
21, 2022, https://blog.xoxoday.com/xoxoday-in-forrester-channel-software-tech-stack/.
4
Anna Stark, “The Journey from Giftxoxo to Xoxoday – Interview with GoodFirms,” Xoxoday, accessed June 21, 2022,
https://blog.xoxoday.com/journey-from-giftxoxo-to-xoxoday/.
3
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Xoxoday could implement gamification in its Empuls platform; according to Singh, gamification would
not only encourage and motivate employees to engage in well-being habits and routines but would also
likely help to arrest the attrition rates among Xoxoday’s clients’ workforces.
Singh’s thoughts had been triggered by some of his recent readings and by his very positive personal
experiences with Aayuv Technologies Private Limited (Ekincare), a provider of platform-based health care
benefits. Xoxoday was one of Ekincare’s many clients. Ekincare’s services enabled corporate employees
to maintain a unified view of their health records, track the benefits of their well-being efforts, and make
recommendations by leveraging AI, deep analytics, and gamification. Singh had been avidly using
Ekincare’s services and was hugely motivated by the graphs and other statistics that showed the
encouraging results of his workout regimen. It was from here that Singh had got the idea of using
gamification to enhance the adoption of well-being service offerings in Empuls.
Singh also mentioned that, according to a recent McKinsey & Company report, after a gruelling twentymonth experience of being in lockdown during the pandemic, the corporate workforce was struggling to
overcome burnout, loss, and grief, all of which had contributed significantly to the “Great Resignation.” 5
These employee issues could potentially be addressed by gamification.
Parveen seemed taken aback by Singh’s recommendation. Without even letting Singh finish, he asked
whether Singh was aware that there had been a consistent meteoric rise in gaming-related health hazards in
the recent past. According to Parveen, the problem had assumed such grave proportions that the World
Health Organization (WHO) had recently included “gaming disorder” in the eleventh revision of the
International Classification of Diseases, defined as a pattern of gaming behaviour (digital gaming or video
gaming) in which the users exhibited impaired control over gaming and ended up prioritizing it over and
above the more important and basic needs of their lives, notwithstanding the negative consequences of
doing so. Parveen also vociferously added that the WHO had identified and reported excessive use of
gaming and its adverse impact on people’s physical and psychological well-being as well as their social
functioning.6 Parveen asked Singh if he thought that any of Xoxoday’s corporate clients would like their
employees to bear the brunt of such disastrous outcomes of gamification.
Reddy understood that Singh and Parveen had both put forth contradictory but compelling arguments. To
reconcile their diametrically opposite views and ensure that the discussion did not snowball into a longdrawn-out and futile debate, she quickly intervened and acknowledged the validity of their viewpoints.
Reddy was glad that they were able to close the meeting on a cheerful note.
GAMIFICATION: A BOON OR A BANE?
Reddy had, in fact, recently read about gamification and had found that it was being extensively deployed
by companies to make users and customers more engaged and interested in products by using game
elements. Gamification in the workplace had been found to improve organizational performance in various
ways, including increasing the adoption and use of tools for knowledge management, boosting performance
and retention rates among employees, providing an impetus to employee knowledge sharing for enhancing
service levels, increasing performance and satisfaction of call centre workforces, and enhancing employee
Bryan Hancock and Bill Schaninger, “Grief, Loss, Burnout: Talking about Complex Feelings at Work,” December 8, 2020, in
McKinsey Talks Talent, McKinsey & Company, 36:33, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-andorganizational-performance/our-insights/grief-loss-burnout-talking-about-complex-feelings-at-work.
6
”Addictive Behaviours: Gaming Disorder,” World Health Organization, October 22, 2020, https://www.who.int/newsroom/questions-and-answers/item/addictive-behaviours-gaming-disorder.
5
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motivation. Founded in 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia, Incentive Solutions, a renowned player in the incentives
industry, reported on March 30, 2020, that more than 80 per cent of US workers found gamification had
led to an increase in their productivity and engagement in training. Gamification had also increased overall
employee engagement by 60 per cent and productivity by 50 per cent.7
Notwithstanding its benefits, gamification also had a dark side. There had recently been stories about
dangerous online games, such as the Blue Whale8 and Momo Challenge, in which people were wrongly
inspired by daring and life-threatening challenges posed through gamification and ended up taking their
own lives.9 According to Katie Hodge, the content management lead for Generator magazine,
“Gamification causes disinterest, loss of performance, undesirable conduct, and fading effectiveness.” 10
Megan Ayala, a well-acclaimed health and fitness blogger, said that gamification was predominantly being
leveraged for inspiring, encouraging, and exciting participants of any environment. “However,” she stated,
“most people don’t realize that gamification forces constant competition pressure, leading to severe fear of
underperforming.”11This caused people to suffer from severe levels of exhaustion and significant burnout,
which, in turn, adversely affected their mental health.12
Reddy contemplated the pros and cons of leveraging gamification for enhancing well-being. What strategy
could be employed?
EMPLOYEE WELL-BEING & ATTRITION: HOW MUCH DID COMPANIES CARE?
While working with her previous employer, Reddy had been a part of product teams that were actively
engaged in providing workplace health care solutions for several corporate clients. Even at Xoxoday, Reddy
had often heard Parveen talk about clients seeking employee well-being service offerings. Reddy was well
aware that, even before the world had been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the emotional and physical
well-being of an increasing number of corporate employees had shown a consistent and rapid downward
trend. With the onset of the pandemic, things had only been exacerbated. Studies conducted in 2020 by
leading institutions such as Qualtrics,13 Gartner Inc. (Gartner),14 the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention,15 and the Kaiser Family Foundation16 had reported a rapidly increasing number of people
affected by depression and increased irritability and emotional exhaustion as a result of the pandemic.
Nichole Gunn, “10 Examples of Gamification for Employee Engagement,” Incentive Solutions, March 30, 2020,
https://www.incentivesolutions.com/blog/employee-gamification-examples/.
8
Tamil Nadu News and Press Trust of India, ”Man in Tamil Nadu Found Hanging, Police Suspect Blue Whale Challenge,”
NDTV News, October 6, 2018, https://www.ndtv.com/tamil-nadu-news/tamil-nadu-man-found-hanging-police-suspect-bluewhale-challenge-1912073.
9
”Information Technology Ministry Issues Advisory Against Momo Challenge,” NDTV, accessed April 05, 2022,
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/information-technology-ministry-issues-advisory-against-deadly-momo-challenge-1908846.
10
Tina
Arnoldi,
“The
Dark
Side
of
Health
Gamification,”
Theravive,
October
21,
2021,
https://www.theravive.com/today/post/the-dark-side-of-health-gamification-0004772.aspx.
11
Arnoldi, “The Dark Side of Health Gamification.”
12
Arnoldi, “The Dark Side of Health Gamification.”
13
“Your Guide to employee Well-Being,” Qualtrics, accessed June 21, 2022, https://www.qualtrics.com/uk/experiencemanagement/employee/employee-well-being/?rid=ip&prevsite=en&newsite=uk&geo=GB&geomatch=uk.
14
Gartner Inc., “Gartner HR Research Reveals More than Half of Employees Have Experienced Significant Damage to Their
Workforce Health since the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” press release, June 9, 2021,
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-07-09-gartner-hr-research-reveals-more-than-half-of-employees-haveexperienced-significant-damage-to-their-workforce-health-since-the-start-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.
15
“Well-Being
Concepts,”
Centers
for
Disease
Control
and
Prevention,
October
21,
2018,
https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm.
16
Nirmita Panchal et al., “The Implications of COVID-19 for Mental Health and Substance Use,” KFF, February 10, 2021,
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/.
7
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Parveen was not convinced about using gamification. Recent research by Gartner had revealed that only 23 per
cent of employees used well-being offerings, even though 87 per cent of employees had access to such offerings.17
A CATCH-22 SITUATION
Over the last few days, Reddy had pondered the pros and cons of leveraging gamification for a digital
platform-based service offering. Xoxoday was already using gamification extensively in Compass, which
was its product line aimed at incentivizing sales force and channel partners; extending gamification to
Empuls would also lead to economies of scale. However, Reddy was not sure about the potential results.
Did digital badges, leaderboards, and trophies actually mean an improvement in well-being? If someone
claimed one hundred points for having done thirty minutes of yoga on a given day, would that really mean
that they had done it? Gamification could create a false set of incentives and could incentivize winning over
the actual objective of enhancing employee well-being. Further, it could create unhealthy competition and
provide a source of distraction.
Reddy was also unsure of how the potential benefits of gamification could be demonstrated to show that
they could have a positive impact on attrition (see Exhibit 1).
WORLDWIDE CONCERN REGARDING RESPONSIBLE AI USE
With the rapid implementation of AI across all domains of the corporate world, industry experts had been
increasingly concerned about its responsible use. This pervasive and rapidly expanding technology used
heaps of information and related data to come up with algorithmic rule-based decisions, recommendations,
and suggestions. Proponents of responsible AI had been forcefully arguing in favour of a transparent and
explainable use of AI globally.18
The chief HR officer of a client organization (the technology and operations service delivery centre of a
leading US financial services company) sounded rather apprehensive while Reddy was trying to gather
some initial impressions regarding the implementation of gamification in a platform-based digital offering
aimed at encouraging and motivating well-being behaviours among the workforce: “I doubt if the leadership
team at our parent office would be willing to go ahead with any such solution unless they are sufficiently
convinced that the AI would be used for good and would not have any unintended negative consequences.”
A senior HR leader at another client firm was equally wary and stated that the product would only be
accepted and adopted once there was evidence for the responsible use of AI.
These were very genuine concerns because there had been several cases of irresponsible use of AI, which
had gained immense criticism globally. For example, fatal collisions had occurred while the autopilot
feature was deployed on Tesla vehicles, Amazon’s AI recruiting tool had reflected bias against women, and
Microsoft’s AI chatbot had turned racist.19
Reddy knew that allaying these concerns would require a further strengthening of controls in Xoxoday’s
overall technology architecture, which would come at an additional cost. Quite understandably, this extra
Carolina Valencia, “How to Get Employees to (Actually) Participate in Well-Being Programs,” Harvard Business Review,
October 5, 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/10/how-to-get-employees-to-actually-participate-in-well-being-programs
18
Claudio Feijóo et al., “Harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Increase Wellbeing for All: The Case for a New Technology
Diplomacy,” Telecommunications Policy 44, no. 6 (July 2020): 101988, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2020.101988.
19
Reethu Ravi, “AI Gone Wrong: 5 Biggest AI Failures of All Time,” Jumpstart Magazine, June 29, 2021,
https://www.jumpstartmag.com/ai-gone-wrong-5-biggest-ai-failures-of-all-time.
17
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cost would be factored into the pricing, thus making the product cost dearer to Xoxoday’s clients. Given
that Xoxoday’s clients’ bottom-line numbers were already squeezed in the wake of the pandemic, the
costlier product would likely not appear very attractive to them (see Exhibit 2).
USING PERSONAL INFORMATION
Customers of Xoxoday’s clients were concerned about their compromised credentials being sold on the
dark web and Internet by hackers and other bad actors, and had repeatedly sought assurance from companies
regarding the protection of their data privacy. This was especially the case in geographical jurisdictions
where a comprehensive regulatory oversight was lacking. A couple of months ago, Reddy had come to
know about a series of meetings among Xoxoday’s senior leadership and founder group team to establish
a strategic road map for strengthening the company’s cybersecurity infrastructure. This occurred in
response to some of Xoxoday’s clients raising concerns about the privacy of their employee data and
inquiring into the details of some of the existing controls. However, Reddy had not yet heard anything
regarding the implementation of stronger security and privacy protocols.
Concerns regarding the security of personal data were also being voiced by leading industry publications
and globally acclaimed international organizations. According to a Forbes article published on June 22,
2021, there was a high trust deficit between end-users and organizations regarding the use of personal data
aggregated through digital platforms. As a result, people were extremely wary of engaging in any
experience that required putting their personal data at risk.20 According to a recent statement by UNESCO,
“We see increased gender and ethnic bias, significant threats to privacy, dignity and agency, dangers of
mass surveillance, and increased use of unreliable AI technologies in law enforcement, to name a few.” 21
Reddy was not sure if employees would be willing to share real information about their health on any such
platform. If many people were not inclined to bring in their personal well-being data, the new version of
Empuls could well be a disaster for Xoxoday. How could Xoxoday bolster the confidence of its clients and
their employees so that they were not reluctant in sharing their personal information and had complete trust
that their health and wellness data would not be used for any other questionable motive? How could trust
pose a potential challenge to the implementation of AI-based talent management solutions?
Given the dark side of gamification, should Reddy incorporate it into a platform aimed at motivating a
corporate workforce toward well-being behaviours? Would gamification undermine the responsible use of
AI? Above all, would the lack of trust among people regarding the privacy of their personal data hamper
the acceptability of the new version of Empuls, in which gamification was being incorporated? How would
the product help lower the attrition rates among Xoxoday’s clients? Reddy knew these questions would
need to be addressed at the next team meeting.
Shama Hyder, “How to Use Data While Maintaining Consumer Trust: What the Latest Research Reveals,” Forbes, June 22,
2021,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shamahyder/2021/06/22/how-to-use-data-while-maintaining-consumer-trust-what-thelatest-research-reveals/?sh=24e4b49d2ddd.
21
UNESCO, “UNESCO Member States Adopt the First Ever Global Agreement on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” press
release, November 25, 2021, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-member-states-adopt-first-ever-global-agreementethics-artificial-intelligence.
20
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EXHIBIT 1: WELL-BEING AND ATTRITION CHALLENGES WITH XOXODAY’S CLIENTS
Client profile
Challenges faced

Employee burnout and fatigue reported during and
after COVID-19 pandemic

Increasing trend in attrition rates:
- 2019–2020: 12.3%
- 2020–2021: 18.1%
New employee attrition: 50%

Employee morale dipping and employee
exhaustion reported

Employee attrition reported at 50%
Client A: A computer numerical control machines
manufacturing firm with operations in forty-five
countries
Client B: A start-up firm in the hypergrowth phase
Client C: A software-as-a-service start-up firm in the
scaling-up stage

A 10% year-over-year increase in attrition rates of
tenured employees

Low morale; feeling less valued

Employee satisfaction scores nosediving and
consistently low over two years
Less than 50% score on morale- and motivation-related
questions in 2021 employee survey
Client D: A travel aggregator firm in India and the
Middle East
Client E: A data analytics start-up firm
Client F: An eight-year-old financial technology
solutions company providing portfolio monitoring
solutions to private equity and venture capitalist firms
More than 30% increase in attrition from 2019 to 2021
Source: Adapted by the case authors from a business review presentation by Xoxoday senior leadership.
EXHIBIT 2: COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS DONE BY A XOXODAY CLIENT
Heading
Actual HR expenditure,
2021–2022 (US$)
HR digitization
Recruitment
100,762
Note
1% of total salary
53,790
Naukri.com (job portal)
LinkedIn recruiter (social
media hiring)
47,800
Applicant tracking system
4,290
Keka HR
Budgeted HR cost, 2022–
2023 (US$)
933
760
Workforce system (HRIS)
5,880
Keka HR software
5,120
PayGroup Limited
760
Salary cost (Full organization)
Corporate social
responsibility
119 333
Total Cost
120, 553
10,076,223
1,220
10,176,985
Note: HR = human resources; HRIS = Human Resource Information Systems.
Source: Adapted by the case authors from a business review presentation by Xoxoday senior leadership.
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