Winning as One with E-Sports
The field of e-sports has gone a long way. It has surpassed the recreation and hobby hurdle and has evolved into an avenue to promote camaraderie, build friendships, and for some a specialized profession. E-Sports is now widely accepted as an actual sport after being included in the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), and its inclusion in the Olympics is currently on the table.
Companies like Facebook and YouTube have seen the potential of tapping the market of gamers by expanding their platforms with dedicated gaming and streaming channels.
UnionBankers’ forward-thinking trait once again emerges as they launch the first-ever bank-wide e-sports tournament. The pilot run held last February 19, 2020 was participated by the first 40 players who signed up for the event from The Plaza and UBX, with over 200 more players in the pipeline.
Top executives of the Bank, including Chairman Justo A. Ortiz, President Edwin R. Bautista, UBX President and CEO John Januszczak, and EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer Michelle Rubio, attended and extended support to the project.
Justo A. Ortiz
Chairman of the Board
UnionBank of the Philippines
“What you’re actually creating are high-performance teams – something that we as a Bank aspire for. And as we move into agile which we’re doing this idea of high-performance team, autonomous, self-sufficient, highly-motivated, becomes very important in an agile environment.”
Out of the 8 teams which competed during the pilot, B2B from UBX and Core Gaming teams went head to head against each other during the final round, with the latter as the Grand Winner of PHP 10,000.00 cash. The event kicks off a series of tournaments spread between March to May 2020.
This activity also allows the Bank to start an E-Sports Club – an initiative that will unify the units of the Bank, promote employee engagement, and later on catalyze projects that would benefit immediate communities. It also has the full support of the SEVP and HR Director Michelle Rubio.
Michelle E. Rubio
Chief Human Resource Officer
“We will form a club. This is going to be the kickoff of an E-Sports Club in UnionBank under our Employee Engagement program. We will support you, sponsor you, handhold you, and get you trained so that you can claim a stake in one of the leagues.”
“Core Gaming” – the first ever champion of the inaugural E-Sports competition
Justo A. Ortiz
Chairman of the Board
UnionBank of the Philippines
“When we do software development, we optimize the software to the user’s needs and requirements. But in gaming, it’s the other way around. You’re optimizing human skills to react in a fixed virtual environment. And that’s really interesting. What’s really important is for us to learn what I call the inversion of usability engineering – how we can optimize human skills to the software.”
With the success of the pilot, the clamor from the gamers across the organization, and the executive support, this tournament might actually be a beginning of something bigger between e-sports and the Bank. Whatever the future holds, only one thing is for sure, WE WIN AS ONE.