I decided to take their idea of turning the adoption of the system into a game, and it would be one entirely available offline as well. This would give the older workers a chance to compete and see their progress. I devised a game of showing not productivity, but customer satisfaction -- a rare metric that was captured in our post-department surveys. The senior managers of the department had extensive dashboards on productivity alone and were at times too obsessed with it, I thought. People in the department considered their worth in productivity alone, not so much in the customer satisfaction they delivered. Focusing on that metric, I put together a short dashboard and had a meeting with everyone in the department, saying that the new system would be used for showing how they as a team delighted and excelled for our internal customers. Immediately the barriers came down with the older workers. I added that the team who came in with the highest customer satisfaction scores every month got a free day off (which was my idea and the senior management loved it). I also explained the system was not there to take away their autonomy, it was there to give them more freedom to better serve internal customers -- because it would show satisfaction with their great work. Many of the older employees still didn't believe it, but when senior management backed me up and said they would be giving the team with the highest customer satisfaction scores a day off, the level of acceptance changed. Gradually at first. Many...

After the first month of the system running, I held a meeting with the department and passed out he customer satisfaction scores by team. Satisfaction scores were highest for the older workers, who made sure every single maintenance request had a customer satisfaction survey filled out by the internal customers they served. The rate of feedback was well over 70%, also a new record for the department. Resistance to change was still there in the most jaded and skeptical people in the department. When the senior management team officially gave the worker team a full day off, then it became real. In addition, they were also given awards, signed certificates as Customer Satisfaction Champions, by the senior staff.
What happened was a shift in attitudes based on senior management getting behind the change management initiative. In addition, turning the use of the new system into a challenging and competitive game helped. Finally, the focus of the entire department on external customers helped to minimize the level of internal conflicts too. Some older workers still did not think the system was a good idea, yet it was hard to argue when their co-worker teams had a free day off to do whatever they wanted. Today there is a ranking of customer service performance by team in the break room. Everyone checks it when they come into work every day. And the new system is being used more than ever, because it's the only way to earn a score that contributes to overall customer satisfaction.