Employee gamification is becoming an increasingly popular strategy for many organizations as they prioritize employee engagement. Gamification is defined as the use of game elements and game-like design for non-game contexts, and it has been proven to be an effective method for keeping employees motivated and engaged. Companies are now finding creative ways to incorporate elements of game design into their everyday work practices, allowing employees to have a more enjoyable work experience. Whether it be through interactive leaderboards, points and rewards systems, or even team-competition based challenges, employers are leveraging the power of gamification to drive employee engagement and performance. By integrating these game-like elements into the workplace, companies are able to create an atmosphere of fun, collaboration, and competition that can lead to increased motivation, productivity, and job satisfaction. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of employee gamification and how organizations can successfully implement it in their workplace.
How to Drive Workplace Motivation through Gamification | AIHR Learning Bite
How to use employee gamification
The actions you can take to incorporate employee gaming into your workplace are as follows:
1. Understand business goals
Employee gamification’s main objective, in addition to raising employee satisfaction and engagement, is to assist the company in achieving its objectives. It’s crucial to comprehend your company’s objectives before choosing the best gamification strategies for your department or those you oversee. For example, owners or shareholders may want to boost sales, which would necessitate a gamification effort that helps employees concentrate on increasing their sales numbers, or they may want employees to receive more training, so training efforts are gamified.
2. Understand your employees
Understanding your employees and what drives them is a crucial component of creating the right gamification for them. You might want to think about whether your employees would be more motivated to compete if they were to win cash or an exciting perk, or if there were any other prizes you could think of. To avoid frustration, you should be aware of what your employees are capable of when you are setting goals or strategies for success.
3. Choose a gamification method
You can choose the best gamification strategy for each goal once you’ve determined your business’ goals and your employees’ needs. For this purpose, businesses or departments can use gamification software or develop their own gamification format. You might discover that specific gamification strategies work better for particular goals or work environments. For instance, a remote workforce may find this app useful as they may not be able to monitor their progress through a centralized office board.
4. Offer multiple options for gamification
Since most workplaces have a variety of roles, employee gamification usually requires a few options to keep everyone engaged. The most successful gamification and goals for a sales team will probably differ greatly from those for an accounting team. Even for those in the same role, having a variety of options may keep work interesting for everyone. You don’t have to use them all at once, but you could space them out to keep people interested.
5. Make it fun
It’s important to keep any gamification you implement in your workplace enjoyable and entertaining for everyone involved because gamification is supposed to be fun. This might entail promoting participation or permitting discussion of the gamified objectives. It might also entail scheduling time for employees to take part in activities connected to the gamification that is taking place at your workplace. For instance, in order for as many employees to participate in a trivia competition related to your line of work, it might be necessary to hold it during working hours.
6. Reward successes
It’s crucial to recognize and reward employees who succeed in gamification events or goals. The incentives could be monetary, like a gift card or cash award, or they could just be a simple badge or acknowledgement of the employees’ efforts. Depending on the type of business, the scale of the accomplishment, and the employees involved, the appropriate rewards may change. Employees should be made aware of the benefits of winning throughout the process, as this can encourage participation and success.
7. Evolve and change
Once you start gamifying your workplace, you might find that using the same competitions or games repeatedly demotivates employees. Avoiding this is best achieved by gradually evolving and changing your employee gamification initiatives. You might decide to use new game formats or compete for different objectives. The right one for your company may also change over time as employees join or leave teams and because current staff members may have different interests and motivations than former staff members.
What is employee gamification?
Employee gamification is a strategy for retaining workers by creating competitions that make work seem fun. Gamification is popular as a way to engage employees in achieving personal and professional goals, though it can also be used outside of the workplace, such as in schools. Using a game to divide larger goals into smaller ones can keep everyone focused because larger goals can sometimes be challenging to manage or motivate for.
For instance, a retail outlet might hold a contest to see which of its cashiers can persuade the most people to sign up for the outlet’s credit card because the outlet wants to open 300 credit card accounts overall that month. For first, second, and third places, there might be weekly prizes as well as a monthly grand prize.
Tips for engaging employees with gamification
Some tips for engaging employees with gamification include:
FAQ
What is employee gamification?
The process of incorporating elements of games into non-game activities, such as working or studying, is known as gamification. Gamification can boost employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention in the workplace.
How is gamification used in HR?
Employee gamification refers to the use of game-like components, such as reward systems, competitions, and point scoring, to increase employee engagement. Consider the following employee gamification stats: 87% of U. S. workers report that workplace gamification would make them more productive.
What are gamification techniques?
Leaderboards, reward systems, online games, challenges, quizzes, and hackathons are examples of common gamification techniques in HR. HR managers alter these methods based on the situation and goal.
