Have you collected reward points at a store to be a gold member? Or, have you completed your profile on a website because you wanted the progress bar to reach 100 per cent?
Brands ‘gamify’ in this manner to motivate you for completing tasks.
And what is this gamification thing?
The human body releases a chemical called dopamine upon experiencing satisfaction or pleasure. “Gamification” is leveraging the human need of wanting to compete and facilitating the release of dopamine to increase engagement, participation, and loyalty.
An awesome benefit of gamification is that it can help you get more work done. Hence, companies across the globe are using gamification applications to increase the productivity of their employees. You, too, can utilise gamification techniques to your advantage.
How can you use gamification during the current COVID-19 crisis?
If you’re an organisation leader, you can encourage your employees in isolation to use gamification as it will make them feel relaxed.
Also Read: How to use the psychology of gamification to grow e-commerce sales
See, the current turmoil is bound to make your employees feel stressed. Gamification, with its fun element, is a great stress buster. It helps in calming down the nerves and can act as an effective remedy in these testing times.
All you need is to use gamification effectively to get the desired results.
In this article, I will tell you five ways to increase the productivity of your employees by applying gamification techniques. However, first, let’s get down to the basics.
Before you begin gamification, you need the consent of the participants. Otherwise, you won’t reach your desired goals. In their research on using games to create a positive experience at work, Ethan Mollick and Nancy Rothbard found three essential factors.
- Consent: Your employees need to acknowledge and be aware of the fact that they are playing a game
- Legitimation: They must understand the rules of the game
- Sense of Individual Agency: They need to believe that the game is fair
Once you’ve taken care of these aspects, you can start designing gamification mechanics based on your goals.
Are you seeking changes in employee behavior or skills? Then tread accordingly.
Now let’s look at the five ways you can use gamification to improve employee engagement and productivity.
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Gamification is a great motivator
As per studies, 95 per cent of employees enjoy using gamified systems. Employees who enjoy their work are motivated to work harder and perform better. Also, enjoyment in the workplace keeps your staff happy, which increases their productivity.
Also, gamification, through its competitive element, inspires your employees to strive for better results. The game design elements – points, leaderboards, badges – motivates them to perform by satiating their psychological needs of recognition, achievement, and appreciation.
Hence, instead of using the traditional approach of brainstorming sessions, companies are increasingly using gamification to motivate their employees. For instance, when technology giant SAP wanted to motivate their sales professionals, they used Roadwarrior, a gamification app.
The app simulated client meetings and took real examples and data on customer needs. While playing the game, the sales professionals had to answer client questions accurately. They earned badges and competed against each other and hence were better prepared to tackle complex sales meetings with clients.
It also provided sales professionals with a better understanding of what to expect and helped them succeed in their meetings.
Gamification increases employee engagement
Due to its gaming mechanics and fun element, gamification increases the participation of your employees, resulting in improved engagement and productivity.
Also, gamification increases employee engagement in your organization as they can check the results of their work immediately. Hence, they can make changes in their efforts and remove hindrances, resulting in real-time engagement.
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For example – The salesforce software at Lawley Insurance was not being updated by its employees, which resulted in a messy forecast and incorrect reporting. Lawley instituted a two-week challenge where employees could earn points for updating their files, logging their phone calls, and scoping out prospects.
According to Concur.com reports, “The contest was responsible for generating the same amount of Salesforce activities in two weeks as had been created in the prior 7 ½ months.”
Gamification improves performance management
Performance appraisals go wrong when your employees feel you do not appreciate their good work. Gamification recognises their efforts by rewards and recognition in the form of badges, points, or leaderboard achievements.
A typical corporate set up requires you to follow three significant steps for managing performance measurement of your employees – goal setting, performance tracking, and feedback.
With gamification, you can set goals for your employees with data. Data is measurable, and hence, you can judge the performance objectively.
For example, stating that your employees need to participate in innovation is subjective. However, if they have to save US$500 through innovation to earn a badge point, it results in a more measurable goal setting. It is a trackable and target-oriented methodology.
Gamification apps track the performance of your employees by checking their behaviour and skills using embedded analytics and automated reports. At the time of their performance review, with the help of an online record in your gamification app, all the achievements and tasks completed by them are readily available.
Hence, you can review their performance more effectively. You will also come to know how well an employee did in comparison to his peers from the number of badges he has received. When your employees receive such an objective, transparent, and data-backed feedback, they can work on improving their performances.
Gamification helps in better time management
When your employees are motivated and engaged, they are more efficient, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and less customer inquiry, which in turn saves time.
Gamification also saves the time of managers in the performance management of your employees by streamlining their goal-setting and feedback. So, the senior leadership in your company can concentrate on other priorities. Ultimately, that translates into time savings. Time savings result in better time management and hence, improved productivity.
Additionally, gamification increases the efficiency of your employees by helping them stay focussed, and hence, consume less time to complete their work.
One such app that uses gamification to increase employee focus is Forest. In it, they would plant a “seed” to block a chunk of time (say 30 minutes) to focus. That seed would become a tree and eventually an entire forest if they worked for those chunks of blocked time (30 minutes) without leaving the app.
However, if they leave the app in the blocked time, the tree will die. This visual representation of the focus of your employees improves their efficiency and productivity.
Gamification elevates learning of employees
Designing gamified solutions that address the learning preferences of your employees, ensure that they retain knowledge and apply their learnings. As a result, their performance improves, and productivity increases.
Also Read: XOXOEngage keeps millennial employees engaged and happy through gamification
NTT Data, a premier tech firm, leveraged gamification techniques for solving the issue of identifying and developing future leaders. Internally, NTT constructed an Ignite Leadership Game that gave its employees the chance to experience leadership situations.
They had to display management competencies in these situations, and they received feedback through comments, badges, and level progress. This information was also visible to the organizational leaders, and it helped them identify high potentials.
The first year the Ignite Leadership Game rolled out, 50 employees took on leadership roles, and 30 new ideas were developed by employees, generating US$1 million in revenue in total.
The initial learning experience of an employee in your organization, during onboarding, can also be improved through gamification.
Employees who undergo a structured onboarding experience are 58 per cent more likely to remain with a company for at least three years. Using gamification in your onboarding process can contribute to greater engagement, and therefore greater retention.
A responsive learning environment motivates your employees to add to your organization’s knowledge base, which you can use for better training of your future employees. You can design such an environment by using gamification in your onboarding process.
Gamification is here to stay. Harnessing the passion of your employees in gaming activities and linking it with your desired objective, can boost the productivity of your organization.
However, the future of gamification depends on how well you use it. Rather than putting it as “an extra,” it is time for you to invest in this tool, the results will soon follow.
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