Gamification is a way that business owners and managers use to keep their employees motivated and engaged. Workers who repeat the same boring tasks will eventually lose interest and morale.
The lack of physical contact with colleagues can lead to employee disengagement in this age of remote and hybrid work, where digital chats replace deskside conversations and lunchtime discussions.
Gamifying projects and tasks keeps employees engaged and motivated by making work fun. We will explore what gamification is, how it helps organizations, and examples of companies who have used it successfully for talent development.
Customer service agents are under a lot of pressure and stress. Customers can be frustrated and they need to respond calmly with empathy. Agents who are fully trained and motivated, and can handle the demands of their job confidently, with the right support, and in a stimulating work environment, feel a sense satisfaction. Contact center gamification can be a powerful and unique way to engage agents, and improve performance management.
Achievement, recognition, and competition are what people thrive on. Human values: the operating system for high-performance contact centers” shows that employees of contact centers who perform best want to be given responsibility and thrive when they are allowed to.
When managers of customer experience (CX), introduce elements that are similar to games into the contact center agents, they become more engaged in their performance. This leads to an improved workplace experience, better customer service, and CX agents that can achieve their full potential.
Contact center gamification encourages friendly competition by using leaderboards and point systems. The employees are encouraged to improve continuously, which increases retention.
What is Gamification?
What is gamification at work and what does it mean? Gamification is the use of game techniques to encourage learners to engage more with material. Gamification is used by many companies to create healthy competition in the workplace. Gamification, which uses scores, levels and prizes to motivate employees, can make them more excited to learn new material.
Recent research shows that 83% people who have received gamification-based training feel motivated, while 61% report feeling bored and unproductive. This is the perfect time to implement this strategy in your business!
Gamification is simply the addition of game-like elements into things that are not typically considered “games”.
Gamification is a way of adding points, badges and other gaming features to traditional corporate training modules and courses. This gives people a different way to learn.
It’s been around for decades but only recently has it become a popular choice for workplace training.
Why Gamification is Effective for Employee Engagement
According to Daniel Pink’s book Drive and the TED Talk that accompanies it, it is important for people to feel autonomous over their work, mastery of the concepts they use every day, as well as a sense of purpose in completing the task. Gamification can help employees connect with any of these concepts, individually or in combination.
- Autonomy: Employees that engage in gamified modules have control over their own success. They can control the pace and work engagement of their learning, which makes them more motivated.
- Mastery: Employees learn the concepts and skills needed to perform their jobs as they progress through training modules. The sense of mastery is reinforced by each badge or certificate that they receive after completing a module.
- Purpose: While many employees complete training because they are motivated to improve their job performance, others may be motivated by extrinsic factors such as badges, certificates or even monetary and physical rewards.
How Gamification Increases Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is widely recognized as a key driver for productivity and growth in a business. It is also true for the depth of employee engagement and the percentage of employees who are engaged.
- 88 percent of employees using gamification are happier at work.
- 89 percent of employees using gamification are more productive.
- According to 78 percent, gamification in recruitment makes a company more attractive.
- 83 percent said that they felt motivated by their training when using gamified methods, while 61 per cent of those who do not use gamified methods feel unmotivated.
Engagement is difficult to maintain and easy to lose. Recent efforts by American companies to increase employee engagement have made a significant difference. The Gallup 2021 survey of employee engagement shows that American workers are at 36 percent, the same as the 2020 aggregate score.
Employee engagement can be more fragile now than ever due to the changing workplace and challenging circumstances HR departments face.
Employees who are disengaged tend to be less productive and lower in morale, as they have a negative attitude towards their work. This is not a one-time crisis. Disengaged employees bring down their coworkers and colleagues, which affects the culture of the entire company.
Gamification: 5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement
Here are 5 ways that adding gamification in your contact center will increase employee engagement and streamline management.
Allows Employees to Monitor and Improve
Gamification is a way to create a fun, interactive environment at work that encourages employees monitor their performance and make improvements.
Gamified leaderboards and performance scorecards consolidate key metrics in real-time, encouraging agents to track their KPIs using engaging and collaborative methods.
The point system adds a healthy dose of competition so that agents can compare their performance to their own and their team’s goals. Agents can also see their performance more clearly and get actionable insights on how to improve.
Streamlines Performance Management
Contact centers produce mountains of data. CX managers can find it difficult to keep up with employee evaluations and reports. Reporting is simplified in the manager dashboards thanks to gamification, which is embedded into the platform of contact centers and powered by AI.
Managers can easily manage and reward team and individual performance by presenting employee performance data in real-time dashboards that are gamified.
Gamification allows managers to create challenges which boost employee performance in peak seasons.
The game design, such as awarding points and other reward schemes, allows agents to see their progress and achievements in real-time. It encourages agents to improve their performance, and promotes teamwork.
Employees are motivated in the moment when agents and managers have access to real-time insights into performance, all through the same interface that is used for interacting with customers. They can concentrate on driving results in order to achieve and exceed current goals.
Supports Remote Workers
Remote work has changed the way we manage employee performance. Every contact center agent should feel like a part of the team, regardless of where they are located. Gamification creates a community by combining collaboration and competition.
Shared leaderboards are a great way to visualize the achievements of agents as they earn points or rewards individually or in teams. This recognition fosters a feeling of belonging and pride.
A shared culture built around gamified metrics improves more than operational efficiency. It boosts collective morale. It creates a team engagement who take pride in providing better, more empathic customer service.
Encourages Collaboration
Although the competitive aspect of gamification may motivate agents, it is best for your contact center to work when managers and employees collaborate. Collaboration is the key.
Gamification creates a social and engaging environment in which agents can share notes and compare strategies. They can unite around their progress and support one another in achieving both personal and corporate goals. You can sometimes award points to employees who are good at working with others.
Managers can easily design reward and challenge systems that promote collaboration and socialization among agents or teams. It creates a friendly environment in which everyone feels part of a larger family and works together to achieve their goals.
Promotes Learning and Training
Shared performance data encourages employees to improve. It is important to give them access to tools that can show them their performance. They should be able to access relevant resources for improvement so that they can chart their career paths.
A 2021 survey of 16 000 contact center agents found that learning new skills and technology was a critical aspect of job satisfaction. Gamification software provides agents with personalized views and tools that make it easy to manage and track their performance, as well as access learning content and coaching sessions.
Gamified training and learning transforms the software into an individualized, consolidated hub of development that provides agents with all the resources and insights they need to achieve their goals. This creates a culture that encourages continuous improvement and learning across the entire contact center.
5 Examples of Gamification Used By Companies
Some companies have already put these efforts to work. Many apps are available for personal use and business that aim to make everyday tasks more fun, encourage better habits and other benefits. Here are a few of the most innovative gamification examples on the market.
Scavify
This virtual scavenger-hunt app and platform gamifies engagement and team building for all types corporate training and employee bonds. There are a lot of pre-made searches to choose from, or you can get a customized one made for your team.
It’s a great idea for team-building days, special occasions or events, or to just give your employees a day off.
Foursquare
Foursquare, the first social gamification site, was built on the idea that by gamifying the verification of online and physical location data people would be more willing to share valuable information without having to pay. The company has grown 10 times in size within five years after adding gamification. Gamification allows users to unlock achievements and earn points for using the platform or website.
007 Goldeneye
This is an unconventional example, but it shows the value of Gamification. The movie was great, but the videogame that was meant to promote it became an icon. Nintendo64 contributed to the growth of the video game market by gamifying Bond with a great game. Video games now make four times as much money as movies. Gamification has made it so that when you mention “Goldeneye”, the majority of people will think first of the videogame.
Todoist
Todoist, one of many productivity apps available today, uses gamification very effectively. You can earn points for completing your tasks on time and completing them according to the schedule. Then you can redeem those points for rewards.
This app can be used to increase personal productivity and even in the workplace for employee development.
Duolingo
Duolingo is a free app that helps users learn a language using a variety scientific methods. The app is available for free and also in desktop format.
How can Gamification help to Increase Employee Engagement?
Gamification strategies motivate workers through constructive criticism. Gamification helps the brain learn by breaking down difficult tasks into smaller, manageable pieces.
- It promotes camaraderie as well as healthy competition.
- This allows workers to be creative and come up with unique solutions for pressing problems.
- The system is enhanced and allows workers to rate themselves in the moment.
All of these elements can have a major impact on the productivity and innovation of an organization. Encourage your employees to ignore conventional knowledge, as it may lead to great rewards. Innovative thinking has led to some of history’s most amazing ideas. If you don’t encourage that type of thinking, you are shackling your own mind.
Even then, there is still a long road ahead for gamification. Gamification is being used by many companies and Leadership Programs. Below are some great tips that you can immediately use to motivate and engage your employees.
Use Gamification to Divide Big Tasks into Bite-Sized Pieces that Make it Easy to Accomplish
To complete any task, it is best to divide the work into teams that are competitive. You will get the desired result. You can encourage a competitive spirit among your employees. Encourage friendly rivalry among teams and departments to motivate your staff.
You can create a channel for progress monitoring in Slack or other programs such as a Google Sheet, Trello board, Notion docs, JIRA workflows, Trello boards, etc. so that your rival’s team can get real-time updates. You’ll be more motivated if you look at the scoreboard and see that you are losing!
Use Gamification for Employee Training
The right personnel onboarding procedures and training can help a business thrive. Onboarding can be improved by including games in the process.
Gamification can be a good way to train new employees for an organization, or to educate existing employees on new skills that are necessary for their career. For example, Leadership Training is a great way to learn the essential leadership skills required to successfully execute projects within a group. It can be difficult to convince staff to attend training at first.
The addition of gamification to a training program can enhance its appeal. Deloitte has a great example of how gamification can be used. By adding gamification to the Deloitte Leadership Academy, it was possible to motivate staff to complete training programs and enroll.
Gamification as a Tool to Improve Job Performance
Gamification can be used in conjunction with training to improve employee performance. Salesforce may be the best example of using game-based learning for performance improvement. Salesforce’s “Big Game Hunter campaign” was launched to increase employee engagement and improve salespeople’s use of the CRM system.
As they gain experience in CRM, sales staff will move from being chicken hunters to more lucrative positions. Compliance increased by 40% for a client!
Gamification Increases Communication with Employees
We forget sometimes that regular communication and feedback from supervisors is necessary for employees to perform their tasks correctly. Employee disengagement is often a result of this. Target was able solve this problem and increase employee engagement through the integration of game-based elements into how its cashiers view their duties.
Target’s line supervisors rarely provide comments. Target decided to change this by introducing features that allow cashiers to play games while checking clients’ purchases.
The gamified system provided real-time feedback to Target cashiers, with flashing green and red lights indicating if the products were scanned properly. Before the idea of gamification, cashiers did not know how effective they are. Now they have feedback on each item scanned.
Try Employee Gamification Platforms
Gamification tools are a great way to boost engagement and motivation. Employee engagement platforms and apps make it easy to set challenges, give points and provide feedback.
Here are some tools you might want to add to your solution for employee engagement:
Arcade HTML0 – Gamify Employee Activities and Reward them with Arcade HTML0
Arcade is an engagement platform for performance that can be customized to fit your business. Arcade brings fun and competition to your daily activities by gamifying them. This app-based employee incentive system will motivate and reward your employees for completing their daily tasks.
Spinify is a Great Tool to Boost Sales
Spinify uses gamification principles and psychological motivation to improve team performance. Easy-to-use interfaces with a visually appealing design are a great way to increase motivation and sales. Create a competitive atmosphere by creating awards and scoreboards, or track your progress using levels and badges.
Build Strong Teams
You can use a remote team building app to gamify your workplace and increase employee engagement. Employees can be united in interactive activities that promote teamwork and collaboration. You may be looking for ways to gamify your workplace or you might want to ensure remote employees feel connected.
Benefits of Digital Gamification in Employee Engagement
Let’s look at some specific examples of how digital gamification can be used to engage your employees.
Gamification Enhances Collaboration and Social Interaction
Finding ways to engage frontline employees by allowing them to socially interact with and collaborate with their colleagues is a challenge.
By gamifying processes, frontline staff can increase their social interaction by:
- Team members may have never met each other before, but they can learn from one another.
- Employees can compete with each other in a friendly way.
- Team missions where the success of the mission is based on the collective contribution.
- When achievements are made public, team members should congratulate and celebrate their colleagues.
#Employee Gamification Examples: Deloitte
Deloitte, a Big Four accounting and consultancy agency, revamped its onboarding process by gamification. Newly hired employees created teams with other newly hired members to learn together important company information such as policies and compliance. In this way, the first interaction of new employees with the company is based on collaboration and teamwork to achieve goals which benefit the entire organization.
Gamified Tools Provide Employees with Real-Time Feedback
Managers can struggle to give frequent feedback or recognition when frontline workers are often out in the field. Employees receive real-time, authentic feedback through game-based processes and training.
Examples of Employee Gamification: Target
Cashiers in retail stores often work alone and don’t get much feedback from their managers, unless it is a serious issue.
Target has gamified its checkout process by measuring customer checkout accuracy and transaction speeds, as well as calculating the success rates of their employees over time. Cashiers receive real-time feedback from the gamified system. They blink red and green lights to indicate if they are scanning items optimally. Target’s cashiers didn’t know how efficient they were before gamifying their checkout process. They get immediate feedback on each item.
Gamification makes Onboarding and Training more Fun
The days of paperwork and videos for onboarding are gone now that Gen Z is officially in the workforce. Gamification offers more engaging and interactive training.
Gamification of onboarding and training has many benefits, including:
- Employees receive training faster and for less money.
- Gamified experiences help employees retain more information and, better still, they put what they have learned into practice.
- The business will benefit from better trained employees and the services they offer to customers.
Examples of Employee Gamification: Siemens
Siemens’ Plantville is a popular example of interactive education for employees that uses gamification. Employees, as well as other stakeholders, can learn about the product and solutions offered by Siemens while managing engagement their virtual manufacturing plant. The company claims that the game measures key performance indicators (KPIs) such as employee satisfaction, safety and quality. These are skills relevant to anyone, whether they’re in the frontline or the C-Suite.
Gamification and Employee Engagement
Gamification’s positive impact on employee engagement is quickly gaining momentum. And while it may not be as simple as “1+1=2”, these impacts can benefit an organization in three different ways.
Gamified Training for Frontline Employees can lead to more Profitable Customer Interactions.
Gamification is a fun and interactive way to help employees learn about the company, its products and how they can better serve the customers with whom they work. SAP, for example, has a game that simulates sales meetings between employees and customers. This allows them to learn how to deal with the real world.
Gamification Increases Employee Motivation and Enhances the Overall Employee Experience.
Gamification is a powerful tool that can increase employee engagement in our new work environment. It doesn’t matter where an employee sits. This has a positive impact on their employee experience. A frontline workforce that is empowered and motivated means that employees will be inspired to perform their best work. This is what we call success.
Employee Productivity is increased when Employee Engagement is Amplified.
Frontline employees can have a significant impact on business performance. They are vital in the customer interaction and satisfaction. Gamification can help employees become more productive, engaged and better trained. This will have a lasting positive impact on your company.
Try these Seven Ideas for Gamification at Work
Gamification can be used in many aspects of work. From recruitment to employee development and training, it is a great tool. Here are some ideas on how to use gamification in the workplace.
Employee Recognition and Motivation
Gamification can be used by companies to motivate their employees. They can reward them for achieving specific milestones or goals. A company could use a points-based system to track employee achievement. Employees can redeem points for prizes such as gift cards, extra time off or other rewards.
Training and Development for Employees
Gamification can be used to improve employee retention and confidence in their abilities. Gamified eLearning modules could be used by a company to teach new skills.
Project Management
Gamification can improve project management by making it more efficient and engaging. Gamification can be used by a company to reward its employees for meeting project deadlines and goals.
Sales
Gamification is a great way to increase marketing and sales by encouraging customers to do specific things, like making a purchase. A company could offer points or rewards to customers for sharing or purchasing a product with friends.
Customer Engagement
Gamification can be used by companies to engage customers through games and interactive experiences. A company could, for example, offer a mobile application with gamified features such as quizzes, rewards, and challenges to motivate and engage customers.
Recruitment
Gamification can make the hiring process more interesting for job applicants. A gamified assessment, for example, could be used to assess candidates’ abilities and suitability.
Employee Wellness Programs
Gamification, which encourages healthy habits such as healthy eating or exercise, can improve employee well-being and help them maintain a good work-life-balance. You could do this by awarding badges, or implementing a leveling system to earn new titles.
These examples of gamification can be used to improve the work environment and increase employee motivation.
Conclusion
Understanding what you want to achieve from gamification is the key to a successful implementation of gamification at work. Listen to the unique motivations and needs of your employees to determine what reward system to use. Test the gamification process after it’s been implemented to see what worked. You’ll achieve your goals if you keep these tips in mind when designing a gamification project at work.
It is important to understand your goals when implementing gamification at work. To develop the right incentive systems for your gamification, you must carefully consider the individual needs and motivations of your employees. It’s important to test the effectiveness of your project after it has been implemented. If you follow these basic suggestions, you can be sure that your gamification for the workplace project will be successful.
Gamification can be used to increase employee motivation and engagement by HR managers. Gamification is also a great way for HR managers to improve employee skills, track performance and encourage desired behaviors.
Gamification can lead to a more dynamic and enjoyable work environment that will improve employee morale and retention. It can also enhance performance. HR managers who embrace gamification can harness the power of fun to create positive change and improve the effectiveness of their HR strategy.