In simple words, gamification means adding game mechanics to mundane tasks in an effort to pique interest. A good example of gamification is to introduce badges or rewards for employees who meet specific targets. However, gamification has real value when it comes to improving workplace productivity. In fact, gamification can improve employee engagement.
What Is the Purpose of Gamification?
Gamification is a growing trend in companies that aim to improve their productivity and employee retention figures. It’s about getting employees to participate more actively in the company’s best interests. By turning various processes into games, gamification ensures greater participation and enthusiasm.
The friendly competition that comes with games helps everyone get in the groove. It’s the same gratitude that athletes feel when they receive medals or what kids feel when they receive gold stars. According to Dupress,55 percent of Americans prefer working for a company that uses gamification.
How Enterprises Use Gamification
Enterprises usually rely on a few basic rules in order to gamify their processes. The elements include:
A Storyline
Creating a storyline is a good way to get the central point across to the employees. It outlines the rules of the gamified process and the goal as well. For instance, the person with the best idea wins or the person with the most points at the end wins.
Challenges
The challenges are reflective of the learning objectives. For example, a good challenge could be selling the most products within a specific timeframe.
Rewards
Rewards are achieved when participants grow and achieve new skills. For instance, if an employee finds a way to increase productivity on their own, they will be promoted.
Feedback
The rewards and points that someone receives for working hard translate into positive or negative feedback for their performance.
Score/Points
Giving out points for individual accomplishments motivates the employees to work hard.
Leader Boards
Leader boards promote competition amongst top players. It also helps people shoot for a more tangible and objective target.
Real-World Applications of Gamification
Deloitte
Deloitte introduced a leadership training curriculum for senior executives. However, they had trouble getting the executives excited about it. When they introduced badges, status symbols, and leader boards to the process, they noticed some great improvements. The average task-completion time fell by nearly 50 percent. The number of users returning to the site daily also rose by 46.6%.
Google once had trouble getting their employees to submit travel expense information regularly. Using gamification, they allowed employees to choose what would happen to the travel allowances not spent. Those allowances would be paid out in the next paycheck, saved for the future, or donated to a charity. This was a resounding success since it resulted in 100% compliance within the first six months of the program’s launch.
Microsoft
Microsoft was facing challenges with localization. They had to translate their product information accurately for users across many regions. This was too much for a single team to handle. Hence, they actually built a Language Quality game involving a Silverlight app. It let users view screens to check language translation accuracy.
They got 4,500 users to review half a million screens to improve or correct translations, improve or correct translations, based on their mother tongues. In Japan, the Microsoft division took a day off to play the game and ended up winning the leader board.
Gamification is clearly a process that is working to better engage employees. If companies are to make further improvements to engage employees, it would be wise to follow this process wholeheartedly.
Cinema8 is a good example for interactive video platform for gamification content.