Service Administration Simulation Games

There are human service organizations that informally over time condense into several service area silos. Service area managers intent in the delivery of high quality services frequently lose sight of the overlaps and interactions among their services. To address this concern, the administrator may use a category of business simulation, business management games, to remind direct reports of the mutual dependencies inherent among their service offerings. While financial results involving interactions between the services may be manually calculated, computerization shortens the decision-to-result cycle making the simulation game suitable for training purposes in addition to continuous improvement initiatives. An example of these games is the Social Service Revenue (Simulation) Game.

This game was designed to capture a series of calculations based upon time recorded in a quarter by 934 human service workers as they provided services to their clients in nine service areas. The recording of time served conforms to the state’s department of human services social service time study standards. In the game, each participating team has to improve targeted and non-targeted case management revenue while holding down the usage of county real estate tax. The results are compared to actual performance of 934 workers set in the simulation game. A participating team may ideally have members representing each of the nine service areas that will jointly decide the allocation of the 934 workers among the nine areas. In one round of the revenue game, each team enters their decision on a game form and the trainer using this data computes the three results. The revenue improvement and real estate tax usage averaged for three rounds becomes the score for the team.

The social service revenue administration game pictured above was developed from one quarter of Social Service Time Study data from an actual human service delivery organization. Microsoft Excel and its macro programming facility was found to be a convenient platform for the game and its use in instructional settings.

Computer simulation of service delivery may be also used to evaluate performance of design alternatives in continuous improvement projects. The advantage of this approach is greatly significant when pilot testing takes inordinate amount of time and resources.

By Noel Jagolino, contributing management consultant. 2018