Testimonials & Success Stories – ESPN

ESPN, a leading American multinational sports media conglomerate and a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, supports a dynamic workforce of over 5,000 employees. Known for producing some of the most innovative and exciting sports coverage worldwide, ESPN’s creative and talented team sets high corporate standards. To maintain these standards and foster continuous growth, ESPN had to prioritize enhancing internal communication as well as career development. By leveraging CardioLog Analytics’ solution, Gamify, ESPN transformed its traditional career center into an engaging and immersive talent development hub, providing employees with limitless career possibilities.

As a large global corporation under The Walt Disney Company, ESPN faced the challenge of making internal career opportunities accessible to its diverse workforce. It was often difficult for employees to discover career paths within the organization and its parent company. The goal was to create best-in-class career services that would support employees across all levels and segments, ensuring they felt that their careers were continuously growing and that they had many opportunities.

Embracing the organization’s creativity, ESPN’s HR team set out to create the ESPN Career Center, built on four primary pillars: personalization, community, gamification, and recognition. This vision quickly became a reality through the use of a 3D environment in SharePoint spaces and other Microsoft technologies, including CardioLog Analytics’ gamification solution, Gamify. The result was a sports-inspired virtual world where employees felt recognized, could network, and inspire one another.

The ESPN Career Center offered personalized, sports-themed experiences for career guidance, such as participating in a virtual track race or baseball game. These immersive worlds featured interactive items that provided content related to employees’ career stages and goals. The inclusion of a competitive element was crucial in making the experience more engaging, motivating, and allowing recognition for those investing time in their career development.

CardioLog Analytics’ solution, Gamify, played a pivotal role in this transformation. Gamify tracked employee interactions with the Career Center SharePoint content, displaying real-time usage via a Power BI dashboard. This helped identify which content types were resonating with employees. As Dayana Falcon of the HR Talent Management team at ESPN noted, “CardioLog Analytics has an awesome gamification technology that we used to create a custom algorithm to assign points to various user interactions and then tap into our competitive culture by awarding monthly career development prizes.”

The transformation of ESPN’s career center into a vibrant, interactive environment led to significant engagement, with over 25 percent of employees visiting the new Career Center within the first few months. Employees earned prizes by accumulating points through exploring career guidance in the 3D career metaverse. This initiative not only provided a fun and immersive experience but also demonstrated ESPN’s ability, under The Walt Disney Company’s umbrella, to innovate beyond traditional sports broadcasting.

The successful implementation of this project, which included games, chatbots, and detailed real-time analytics, was accomplished in just a few months with minimal custom development. CardioLog Analytics is proud to have contributed to this engaging career development experience with its Gamify tool, helping make the ESPN Career Center a remarkable success.

The innovative use of technology at ESPN, supported by The Walt Disney Company, created an engaging and immersive career development experience that highlights the power of combining creativity with advanced solutions. CardioLog Analytics is proud to have been a key partner in this transformation, demonstrating how Gamify can enhance employee engagement and career growth opportunities.