Human Resource Management · Draft plus pay negotiation

🧑‍💼 How to play Talent Draft

You run a growing tech firm in Dubai Internet City and must draft, pay and keep the people who make it work.

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Your goal

Earn the most net output over three quarters. Output comes only from people who stay, so hire well, pay close to market, and keep engagement up. Meet the Emiratisation target or pay fines.

You run one tech firm that starts with six staff. Every firm drafts from the same candidate pool each quarter, so rivals can take the people you want.

Join in 30 seconds

Scan the QR code on the big screen with your phone camera, or open the game page and type the 4-letter code.
Type your first name. No app, no account.
Join a team or create one and name it. Your teammates get a role each. In individual mode you run your own tech firm.
If your phone locks or the page reloads, open it again: you return to the same seat.

Team roles

Lead: Chairs the team and submits the final decision. If the Lead's phone dies, any teammate can take over. In this game: Own the preference order: fill the roles your plan needs first.
Analyst: Owns the numbers and the team's prediction for the round. In this game: Compare each candidate's skill with their salary ask; value per dirham matters.
Treasurer: Watches the budget and costs before the team commits. In this game: Payroll is paid every quarter; a pay premium compounds across your whole team.
Risk and ethics officer: Flags harms and pushes back before the team commits. In this game: Watch flight risk and the market wage: who is likely to leave next?
Voice: Talks to other teams and presents the team's story at the debrief. In this game: Track the Emiratisation target and how national hires fit your plan.

The three rounds

Each round you predict your own result, make your decisions within about 9 minutes, and then the model reveals what happened. An event card lands between rounds.

1
Quarter 1 · First draft
The draft order is random. Pick up to three candidates, set your offer, raise and engagement budget.
Watch for: Who you hired, who left and why, and how engagement changed your output.
2
Quarter 2 · The poachers
The draft order now puts the weakest firm, by total net output, first. The market wage has risen 4%. Any event card from quarter 1 applies now.
Watch for: Your risk column: who is underpaid against the market, and how your attrition compares with rivals.
3
Quarter 3 · Hold on to them
The last draft. A retention bonus is now available for current staff. Weakest firms again pick first.
Watch for: Whether the bonus kept the people you aimed it at, and what turnover cost you this quarter.

Your decisions

What each control on your phone does, and how to think about it.

First choice candidate	Every round	Your top pick. The draft runs in three snake passes, and you take your highest-ranked pick still free at your turn. You can hire up to three people a quarter. Fill the role your plan needs most. Compare skill with the monthly ask: value per dirham matters.
Second choice	Every round	Your backup if the first is taken, and your likely second hire. It is used on any pass where your earlier picks are gone or already hired. Rivals pick from the same pool. Choose a backup that still serves your plan if your first choice disappears.
Third choice	Every round	Your third preference. You can leave it blank if you do not want a third hire this quarter. Each hire adds a quarter's payroll. Only fill this if the person will produce more than they cost.
Pay offer to new hires	Every round	90% to 125% of each candidate's ask. Below 95%, candidates refuse and you hire nobody. New hires are paid ask × offer every month. Higher pay cuts their chance of leaving later, but the premium is paid every quarter they stay.
Pay change for current staff	Every round	0% to 20% raise for everyone already on staff. The market wage rises 4% each quarter, so staff who fall behind it become more likely to leave. Check the vs market column. A raise across the whole team is costly, so weigh it against who is actually at risk.
Engagement budget (tokens of AED 4k)	Every round	Up to 10 tokens across training, flexibility and career paths. Engagement multiplies output and lowers everyone's risk of leaving. Training also lifts skills a little. Returns fall within each lever, so a spread usually beats piling tokens on one. Engagement also builds up gradually across quarters.
Retention bonus for your top performers	Round 3 only	No bonus, Top 2 people at AED 15k each (halves their risk of leaving), or Everyone at AED 6k each (cuts everyone's risk by a fifth). Look at who your top two by skill are and how risky they are. A bonus only pays if it keeps someone valuable.
Support staff after the AI tool	Rounds 2–3, after the AI event	Keep support specialists on current work at half output, or retrain them at AED 8k per person to restore 85% of their output. Compare the retraining cost with the output you would get back from your support staff.

What you see on your phone

Your firm now: Headcount, monthly payroll, UAE nationals against the target, engagement score, the market wage index and your draft position.
Your people (risk of leaving this quarter): Each person's skill, pay, pay versus market and estimated risk of leaving. Use it to decide raises, engagement and, in quarter 3, bonuses.
Candidate pool this quarter: Up to 12 candidates with role, skill, monthly ask, flight risk and UAE national status. Any extra candidates are listed in the pick menus.
Last quarter: From quarter 2, a one-line recap: how many you hired, how many you lost and your net output.

How you are scored

Every game in the library uses the same scoreboard. Your round result is your Net output (AED k); the leaderboard adds resilience and trust.

Score = 100 × (0.5 × performance + 0.25 × resilience + 0.25 × trust) + prediction points

Performance: Net outputNet output (AED k) per quarter: output from staff who stay, times the engagement multiplier, minus payroll, half a quarter's pay for leavers plus a full quarter's pay to replace them, engagement tokens, Emiratisation fines, bonuses and retraining.

Resilience (0–100)Resilience moves halfway each quarter toward a target built from your retention rate and bench depth: having at least two software engineers and two data scientists.

Trust (0–100)Trust is an engagement survey. It moves halfway toward a score that rises with engagement and fair pay against market, and falls by 4 for each person who leaves.

Performance is your total Net output over the rounds, scaled from the lowest to the highest in the room. Before each round you also predict “Your net output this quarter”: land close and earn up to 10 bonus points; miss by the whole amount and earn none. The facilitator may change the weights before the game starts.

Tips

Value per dirham beats raw skill. A skilled hire who asks far above their output can lower your net.
Pay near market for people who matter. The risk of leaving climbs fast when pay drops below market.
Flight risk is personal. Two people on the same pay can have very different chances of leaving.
Plan your Emiratisation target early. Each missing national is a fine every quarter, and national candidates go fast.
A firm that falls behind picks first next quarter. A weak quarter is not the end of the game.
Count the full cost of a leaver: lost output, part of a quarter's pay, and a quarter's pay to replace them.

Common mistakes

Offering 90% to save money. Every candidate refuses offers below 95% of their ask, so you hire nobody.
Skipping raises while the market wage rises 4% a quarter. Your existing team drifts below market and starts to leave.
Cutting the engagement budget to boost one quarter. Engagement builds slowly, and losing it raises attrition across the team.

A worked example

Qamar Labs drafts a software engineer with skill 70 who asks AED 35.2k a month, and offers 100%. With engagement at 50, she produces about AED 164k of output a quarter against AED 106k of pay. Her pay matches market, her flight risk is 50% and she is new, so her risk of leaving this quarter is about 9%. If she stays, she adds roughly AED 58k before engagement costs.

Shocks that can hit

The facilitator draws one event card before rounds 2 and 3. It changes the market from that round on.

Rival poaches with 20% raises. A well-funded rival is hiring your best people with 20% raises. The market wage rises 12%, and top performers are being called.
AI tool automates support. A new AI assistant handles routine customer tickets. Support specialists now produce half as much unless you train them for new work.
Staff ask for remote work. Staff across the zone want more hybrid working. Every token you spend on flexibility now counts double.
New graduate cohort. Universities release a big graduate class. Next quarter's pool has cheaper candidates with lower skills.
Emiratisation target rises. The ministry raises the national hiring target. Firms now need 30% UAE nationals, and fines per missing person rise.

The model behind the game

Attrition hazard with engagement. Each person's chance of leaving rises when you pay below market and falls when engagement is high. Output comes only from people who stay, so overpaying and underpaying both cost you.

h = h0 · exp(β1·(w_mkt − w)/w_mkt − β2·g) × flight factor ; output = Σ skill × role value × (0.85 + 0.35·g) − payroll − engagement − fines

Attrition: Staff leaving the firm. Here each person has a chance of leaving every quarter.
Attrition hazard: The chance a given person leaves this quarter. It rises with pay below market and falls with engagement.
Market wage: What a person with that role and skill could earn elsewhere. It rises 4% a quarter in this game.
Engagement: How committed staff feel. It lifts output and lowers everyone's risk of leaving.
Flight risk: A candidate's personal tendency to leave, shown as a percentage. Higher-skilled people tend to have more.
Cost of turnover: Lost output plus the cost of recruiting and onboarding a replacement.
Emiratisation: UAE policy requiring firms to employ a target share of UAE nationals, with fines for each person short.
Snake draft: Picks run in order, then in reverse, then in order again, so the last picker also picks next.

For facilitators 3 rounds · about 50 minutes

Set-up

Team mode with 3–5 per team, or individual mode for smaller groups. The game needs at least 4 firms; bots fill the rest.
Allow 9 minutes per quarter. Quarter 1 needs time to read the people table and the candidate pool.
Before quarter 1, explain the draft: three snake passes, and a candidate taken by a rival is gone.
Point out the 95% refusal line and the 20% Emiratisation target before anyone submits.

Modes

Team: Roles fit the form: Lead owns the picks, Treasurer sets pay, Risk spends engagement, Analyst handles redeployment.
Individual: Each student runs a firm and drafts against everyone in the room. Bigger rooms mean a bigger pool but more competition for the best people.
Hybrid: Each student runs a firm and the team score is the average. Teammates still compete in the draft, which makes for good debrief discussion.

Run sheet

Before class	Open the facilitator console on the projector laptop, choose the mode in Setup, and check the QR shows.
0–5 min	Students scan and join. Read the situation aloud while teams form. Point out the roles on their phones.
5–16 min	Round 1: 9 minutes to decide and predict, then Reveal. Read the headline and one surprising line from a team.
Between rounds	Draw or choose the event card. Give teams 30 seconds to read it before opening the next round.
16–27 min	Round 2, then Reveal.
29–40 min	Round 3, then Final results: podium, awards and the score chart.
Last 12 min	Debrief with the questions below, then open reflections (4 minutes). Download the CSV.

What usually happens

Teams that chase the highest-skill candidates regardless of price. Compare their payroll with their output.
Firms that skip raises. By quarter 2 their risk column fills with high percentages.
Several firms listing the same top candidate. Use the draft order to discuss scarcity and backup plans.
Fines for missing the national target, especially if the Emiratisation event raises it to 30% and AED 40k per person.
The retention bonus in quarter 3: ask whether teams aimed it at people who were actually at risk.

Debrief questions

Was your best hire worth the price? Compare their output with their salary.
Who left your firm, and could you have predicted it from pay, engagement and flight risk?
Did firms that paid above market do better, or did payroll eat the gain?

Follow-up probes

Which person in your firm was most valuable per dirham, and how did you protect them?
Did you pay above market for anyone? What did it buy you?
How did the draft order change your strategy in quarters 2 and 3?
How did you balance the Emiratisation target against skill and cost?
If you had AED 40k more, would you spend it on pay, engagement or hiring, and why?
What would a real HR director measure to spot flight risk before someone resigns?

Reflection and evidence

Write a retention plan for one critical role in your firm. Estimate the cost of losing that person (lost output plus rehiring) and justify the pay and engagement you would offer.

Students write 80–120 words on their phones. The Data tab exports every decision, result, prediction and reflection as one CSV for grading.

Console controls

Pause, extend or set the timer; step back a round
Draw, choose or write the event card
Move players, make a Lead, add computer players
Award or fine with a reason that appears on phones
Message every screen; hide names; spotlight a team
Keys: P projector mode, Q join QR