What is Gamification?
Gamification is the usage of game-thinking and game mechanics in non-game scenarios such as business environment and processes, specifically in recruitment, training and development, and motivation; in order to engage users and solve problems.
According to a Gallup research, less than one in 10 employees are ‘engaged’ in their jobs. The remaining are ‘not engaged’ (60 %) or are ‘actively disengaged’ (32 %) - the most harmful form of disengagement. The objective is to take techniques from game design and implement them in non-game contexts so that the overall experience for the employee or 'user' is more engaging.
The key to gamification is how addictive it can become across all generations of people. It is believed that the advantages that are part of gamification encourage users to stay engaged and interact with each other, building stronger relationships.
A number of organizations like Marriott, Cognizant, and Deloitte are using gamification to improve workforce alignment, enhance employee skills, solve complicated issues and tap into new talent pools. Typical game design techniques consist of goal setting, competition, real-time feedback and rewards.
How does Gamification work?
The power of Gamification works like this:
- It utilizes the competitive streak we all have within us and as we play a game
- We become more absorbed and engaged
- We feel a greater sense of achievement and are more willing to go the extra mile in either making more efforts to choose the right people, or completing more training programs, or even helping employees to stay motivated.
- And as we progress, we continue to increase our engagement with the game and reach new levels.
Advantages of Gamification
Improving talent acquisition and management
You can easily turn the hiring process into a gamified experience by rewarding prospects with both acknowledgement and tangible perks for completing each step, from application to start date. Providing incentives can not only help attract qualified candidates from the start but can also dramatically increase onboarding efficiency as candidates are motivated to complete various steps to earn rewards.
At the same time, much like a sales function, HR teams can also use gamification internally to reward top recruiters and incentivize employees to refer top candidates. The opportunity for an employee to earn Referrer of the Year status can encourage employees to take a more active role in talent acquisition, and even help relieve some of the pressure from the HR department itself.
Cultivating corporate culture and retaining valued employees
Keeping employees engaged and feeling like they’re part of the team is critical for retention. And, retention is paramount in maintaining valuable personal assets, institutional knowledge and consistency, and avoiding costly turnover.
You can use gamification to promote a positive corporate culture by rewarding employees for cross-departmental collaboration, providing a process or product improvement suggestions, or even participating in company-wide volunteer programs, for example.
You can use a gamified platform to track these activities and opportunities, as well as showcase employee participation to their coworkers to provide intrinsic motivation. As an added benefit, the platform maintains a record of all employee activities in the program, which is quite valuable information when it comes time to consider promotions, raises, and other tangible rewards.
Motivating employees to learn and participate in training
Mandatory HR training, like sexual harassment, diversity, and other compliance programs are often not high on most employees’ priority lists, especially when they don’t see a relationship to their day-to-day job duties. Motivating them to take time out of their busy day to complete these programs in a specified time period can be challenging.
Adding a gamification experience to the online learning program can spur action. Employees who earn rewards and recognition for having completed these tasks, or missions in the gamification lexicon, are far more likely to make it a priority.
And, HR benefits from the ability to check those boxes for compliance in a timely fashion, without the pressure of having to hound employees to complete the programs.
Incentivise paperwork and other administrative requirements
No one likes to complete paperwork, especially when other tasks are more pressing and exciting. But, paperwork is unavoidable in areas such as completion of benefits enrollment forms and expense reports. So why not make it fun?
Similar to training applications, rewarding employees with either peer or management recognition — or even tangible incentives — for completing required forms can create a friendly competition where employees try to out-do one another.
Mapping the path to career success
It’s no secret that peer mentorship is a powerful motivator that drives employees to want to succeed. They see colleagues earning praise, achieving goals and climbing the proverbial ladder, and they want to know how they can achieve the same results. Using gamification, HR departments can create transparent, mission-based career paths that show the steps employees have taken to level up in the organization.
For example, perhaps the top salesperson completes refresher training annually, turns in expense reports within a week of travel, keeps his/her prospect pipeline up to date, logs 5 new leads every week and follows up on two.
By showcasing this behavior in a gamified platform, other employees can see what it takes to become the top salesperson as this mentor provides a breadcrumb path to show peers the way to the top.You can even design such programs to allow team members to recognize one another for contributions made toward a common goal. And, again, all of this data is trackable, creating a valuable historic record to capture employee and organizational knowledge.
By consulting the platform, it’s easy to identify employees who have achieved certification in specific skills, worked with clients in a specific industry or make other connections throughout the data. All of this combines to create a more efficient, collaborative, productive and upwardly motivated workforce.
To some, the idea of gamification sounds like a thinly veiled attempt to bait employees into doing what they should already be doing. But the truth is, organizations can use gamification as an effective way to combat the employee engagement crisis.
Using gamification, HR executives and their teams can create a more interactive, rewarding and attentive workforce. It can help ward off worker malaise by leveraging intrinsic motivators to drive desirable employee behavior and improve efficiency and ROI while reducing turnover and churn costs.
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