The Co-Worker
View the case- Brand
- IKEA
- Year
- 2024
- Objective
- Lead Gen & Recruiting
- Industry
- Retail
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Mother
- With
- The Gang
Objective
IKEA UK was seeing fewer applications from 18-25-year-olds just as its usual recruitment channels stopped landing with digital natives. The brand needed to make its employer identity as appealing as its consumer one, reframe IKEA careers as a flexible, cross-department path rather than a fixed job, and drive a real spike in store applications during its make-or-break May-June hiring window.
Solution
You land inside a full-scale IKEA store rebuilt in Roblox, right down to the showroom room-sets, the Swedish Food Market and the Bistro. Pick a department and clock in: each one hands you a mini-game built around an actual co-worker task, from restocking shelves to running the till. Clear tasks and you rack up XP, which unlocks promotions and lets you walk over to a different department without losing any of the progress you've already banked. A session is really an open shift — you keep hopping between roles and rounds for as long as you want, building out a virtual career instead of finishing a level.
Results
The linked open call for 10 paid virtual co-worker roles drew over 178,000 applications in a two-week window. The Roblox experience itself pulled in 6.7 million visitors during the campaign (8.2 million visits and 184,500 favorites recorded cumulatively as of August 2026), peaking at 6,134 concurrent players in June 2024. The campaign generated over 2,000 news articles and 16 billion earned media impressions. Real-world job applications to IKEA UK stores rose 50%, making it the company's most successful recruitment campaign to date, while careers website traffic grew more than 4x with engagement up 26%. A post-campaign survey of 15,000 respondents found 72% of players said the experience improved their perception of working at IKEA, 70% agreed it's easy to move between departments, and 85% agreed IKEA is a great place to work.
- 1
The Co-Worker is IKEA UK & Ireland's official Roblox store, built as the second phase of a real recruitment drive: an open call for 10 paid virtual jobs draws over 178,000 applications, followed by digital interviews that select ten people IKEA actually hires and pays. The experience itself opens to any Roblox player on 24 June 2024.
- 2
Players spawn in an entrance lobby where a welcome message frames the game as a career: explore two areas, take on roles, gain experience, and grow in any direction. A display case holds four free collectible items, each tied to an in-game task, giving players an immediate goal to chase.
- 3
From the lobby, players pick one of two departments — the Showroom or the Swedish Bistro & Food Market — and can switch between them at any time. Outside of job mode, they roam a store built to match IKEA's real layout and product ranges, alongside NPC shoppers and staff modeled on real IKEA employees.
- 4
Approaching a department's work station starts job mode, a short mini-game tied to one of IKEA's real staff roles; the experience includes seven such jobs across the two departments.
- 5
In the Showroom, job modes escalate from guiding shoppers to items and tidying displays, to assembling a room set from a design brief, to recommending products based on a shopper's specific needs.
- 6
In the Bistro and Food Market, players read icon-based orders above NPC customers' heads and prepare and serve hot dogs, meatballs, and drinks; the Food Team Leader role adds keeping the space guest-ready and coordinating the wider team.
- 7
Completing job-mode tasks earns XP, and reaching a threshold offers a promotion that unlocks harder job modes, up to management-level roles in either department. Players can move sideways between the Showroom and Food track without losing accumulated XP, mirroring IKEA's real non-linear career paths.
- 8
A collectibles track runs alongside the career loop — one hat, for instance, requires 20 minutes of playtime plus clearing every Food Market job mode, redeemed back in the lobby. The store is also staffed by the ten real paid Roblox co-workers greeting and helping visitors, and both the game and its press materials point players to thecoworker.co.uk and ikea.co.uk/careers for the real-world recruitment campaign.
