Gamification has emerged to be a powerful employee engagement tool that is critical to any organization’s success today. Work can be made more enticing and enjoyable by gamifying processes and providing a myriad of gamified elements such as points, scores, badges, leaderboards, feedback, and great overall experiences. However, it is important to highlight that gamification does not only focus on ‘making work enjoyable’ because there are established ways of achieving greater productivity, boosting an accomplishment mindset, and enhancing collaboration, which the gamification approach provides. This blog will explore gamification: how it works, what it brings about, and what the best practices of gamification in business focusing on employees’ experience in the workplace.
The Concept of Gamification
In simple terms, gamification is the use of game elements, i.e., rules, point system, competition – to achieve non-game objectives such as work or even training. It may appear as a fad, but gamification satisfies basic human psychological drives which include competition, achievement, and recognition, these drives are strong determinants of motivation. For instance, individuals may be able to compete for points or badges to achieve certain targets or milestones, finish certain processes, or attain a certain level of efficiency which is usually enumerated on a leaderboard. Such forms of recognition help foster emotional attachment to their jobs and hence higher engagement levels.
The Role of Gamified Training Programs in Employee Engagement
Most businesses are beginning to appreciate the idea of breaking the monotony that has become apparent in employee training. Most businesses experience difficulties incorporating training into their day-to-day schedules, especially with new hires. To embrace this, some companies have developed what they term as gamification of the whole training process. For this process to gain full acceptance by the target audience, gamification must meet certain requisites. One of them is engaging employees and making the entire training process not only interesting but rewarding as well.
Leaders have to nurture an understanding of how the game as an approach develops and shapes behaviors and skills, and in turn leads to the result that they are after. Saying that it reshapes the training process wouldn’t be that far from the truth. For organizations in need of constant improvement, gamified training is almost a must.
This brings me to this point: organizations need to assimilate these gamified systems into their training processes as it will not only boost their chances of success but will also keep the employees and members of the company engaged – and that translates into high retention rates and increased productivity levels.
How does Gamification Contribute Positively in a Workplace?
Increased Motivation and Productivity
If the activities in the workplace are entertaining, simply put, it is easier for people to do them. Gamification enhances, empowers, motivates, and encourages employees to go beyond their limits and stay focused on their tasks. Everyone has a primary task to handle and these mundane chores are made to feel rewarding and accomplished once achieved.
For instance, Auzmor’s customizable learning platform offers gamified systems whereby integration of goal setting, tracking the learner’s progress, and feedback motivates individuals to accomplish objectives. As a result, the employees become more concentrated on the work resulting in improved productivity.
Real-Time Feedback and Recognition
Feedback, or the lack of it, is often the deciding factor determining the outcome regarding the development of every given employee. This is because routine assessments only assist in changing the behavior of an employee so much. Thanks to gamification, employees can expect feedback within a short period, either through an online app or by their senior managers. Earning a badge for on-time completion of a training course or reading out their name from the list of the best workers generates excitement which in turn, fosters ambitious behavior.
In a gamified workplace, several aspects of game mechanics can be employed within the workplace to motivate employees from earning badges or gaining completion points to upfront cash (incentives) or vacation days. Since encouragement is delivered externally, this also ensures that the employees never lower their guard and will always aspire for more.
Promoting Healthy Competition
If the competition isn’t toxic, then it can inspire the employees to become more engaged in the work. It has been observed that management or companies tend to gamify ‘peer to peer ‘ by deploying leaderboards and challenges to employees which helps them in healthily performing the task with competition. Employees look forward to being awarded as top achievers and make sure that they do better by observing other achievers.
That said, it is also important to remember that the competition is not dominant and does not alienate the people. There are certain personnel who are introverts and may not be as keen on direct competition so it is important to ensure that competitive aspects are maintained alongside team-orientated aspects of the competition.
Enhanced Collaboration and Team Spirit
In certain situations, gamification can also be employed to achieve the goal of driving cooperation among employees within the relevant teams. Instead of concentrating on individual success, companies may create gamified projects that require teams to function and become successful as a unit. Gamification can make employees more social to improve communication and teamwork, whether through common goals or joint activities.
For instance, the entire sales department could devise a game where several targets need to be achieved by various employees and everyone who reaches any of the goals will earn rewards as a group. Such a system creates friendship among the people and makes the workplace more cohesive.
Best Practices for Implementing Gamification
There can’t be a single way of approaching gamification in the workplace. With any activity, one needs to apply best practices, which in this case will be necessary for the successful implementation of gamification. The following questions should help devise the proper gamification strategy:
Align Gamification with Business Goals
Most approaches to business do have KPIs, however, there appears a tendency to separate KPIs from the gamified system. There is no gamification without business goals. If you’re looking to improve sales, make the system aim to support that target. For example, if an organization’s focus is on increasing sales, for some of the managers considering sales volume, it is possible to reward them with points or badges for surpassing sales goals set by the organization.
Keep It Simple and Fun
Many would agree that one of the main pillars contributing to the success of a system is its level of complexity. If it’s complicated and a lot of time needs to be spent mastering the system, people may lose sight of the reason behind it and as such, may become uninterested. Game features should be easy to understand, and goals should be realistic, especially at the initial level of the system, to encourage employees. Still, remember that gamification should not make the work processes more difficult, but rather improve the working experience.
Foster Healthy Competition
Competition can be used as a strong motivating factor, however, it’s important to ensure that it stays constructive and does not exclude certain individuals. Not each of the employees can perform their best if the fight is highly competitive. In such cases, care should be taken to design a system that complies with multi-operability and includes both individual and team performances. A healthy mix of competition and cooperation may help in overlooking adverse sentiments and also provide a greater sense of support in the workplace.
Provide Meaningful Rewards
Recognition and rewards are the main goals of gamification features, although such rewards should be appreciated by the employees. From public recognition, promotion, or even bonuses and extra days off, it should be tangible and feel worthwhile. Trivial rewards (for example purely symbolic badges) should be avoided as such practice may lead to the latter losing its effectiveness very quickly.
Use Data to Monitor Progress
One of the advancements that come with digital gamification platforms is the measure of tracking the target employee performance. Let this information guide you in the evaluation of both the individuals and the team, and also the relation of the level of the game framework to the performance of the employees or group. Tracking performance metrics will enable the firms to survey what is effective and what needs reform.
Evolve the System Over Time
To maintain the interest of employees, it is necessary to improve the gamification system over time. It is important to frequently change the challenges, rewards, and goals so that employees do not feel too comfortable or bored. Whenever employees implement a gamified system, the organization is expected to grow and expand, thus creating new objectives and possibilities for employee advancement.
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Gamification
Nothing is perfect, and this is true as well for gamification; there will always be some defection of some sort. There is a high chance that a faulty and poorly administered gamification system will create negative elements such as disengagement, exhaustion, and undesirable competition among the participants. Gamification also has several defaults; some of them including the following have effects but with proper implementation, their effects can be minimized if not entirely gotten rid of.
- Overemphasis on Competition: Giving everything in the method of fighting can be very destructive to employees who might not be well suited to this environment. Elements of competition and collaboration must be balanced well.
- Inconsistent Rewards: Employees could get demotivated if the rewards are not meaningful or if the variables are scattered randomly. Reward distribution must be proportionate to the objective and achievable.
- Lack of Long-Term Engagement: Gamification ensures success when it becomes part of the organizational framework rather than a department; this, on the other hand, does not imply that gamification is a phase. Keep changing your gamified system to make it entertaining for employees.
Real-Life Success Stories
Several companies have reaped the advantages of gamification, for instance, Salesforce had a gamified system aimed at maximizing sales. Gamification in place helped Salesforce boost its quota, especially by establishing leaderboards to appreciate and reward the best performers in the organization whilst encouraging constructive competition.
PwC is another success story, which applied gamified systems in its employee training programs. For PwC, using game elements in the training has proved helpful as an increase not only in the completion rates was noted, but also in the amount of knowledge gained and the ability to put that knowledge into practice.
How Auzmor Can Help You Implement Gamification
Auzmor has got you covered with a range of solutions to suit the varied requirements of your workforce with customized training modules, gamification elements, and learnable reward systems. What Auzmor offers in its learning platform allows organizations to build training that is more fun and easy and enhances development while ensuring employee contentment.
With features like instant feedback, performance history, and considerable difficulty levels, Auzmor helps organizations to improve their employee engagement practices making both education as well as working processes more fun. No matter if you want to enhance the effectiveness of induction practices, familiarize employees with new responsibilities, or nurture interdepartmental interaction, Auzmor offers different gamified features that will work just fine and even better.
Conclusion
In general, gamification is an interesting way to enhance employee experience and engagement. This helps employees to improve productivity, collaboration, and retention of best talents by incorporating game elements into normal tasks and learning. Companies like Auzmor allow organizations to create gamified solutions that are consistent with the organization’s business requirements, making it even easier to implement this strong engagement tool.
With the way the workplace is changing, gamification will have an increased say in the way companies train, motivate, and retain employees. Organizations can take advantage of gamification by adhering to the best practices and improving the approach over time for maximum benefits as well as a more engaged and motivated workforce.
