Gamification of Employee performance – A new Management approach

What is gamification in the workplace?

Gamification, in a nutshell, is the application of fun, engaging and addictive elements found in games to non-gaming contexts. A trending one is employee performance management. Games trigger powerful emotions in humans and provide a steady dose of motivation to take certain challenges in a bid to achieve a series of goals. Remember the endless times we kept going back to FarmVille or Diablo III, with commitment and focus at their best. And that’s majorly because we enjoyed the tasks presented by those games. In the same way, using game mechanics for enterprise gamification makes tasks enjoyable, meaningful and rewarding for employees, hence they work harder and deliver turbocharged employee performance, that too without carrying any negative feeling of being forced to do so. Actually, the power of gamification comes down to the more of human-focused approach and less of the ages old function-focused one.

The current state of GAMIFICATION

There is growing evidence that gamification is only becoming more and more common and the market size is expected to increase by leaps and bounds in the coming years. A report by Mordor Intelligence revealed that the gamification market was valued at $7.17 billion in 2019 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 30.31% over the forecast period (2020-2025). P&S Market Research also estimated that the gamification industry will become a $22.9 billion juggernaut by 2022. The exponential growth of smartphones, more and more people using social media sites and corporate sector increasingly recognizing gamification systems for better employee engagement are the major factors behind the skyrocketing growth of the gamification industry.

How gamification motivates people (here employees) to do extraordinary things?

Influences human behaviour

Don’t mistake gamification for just playing games - it’s rather the use of game mechanics, an engaging storyline, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML) to influence human behavior for good and help achieve a certain objective. AI and ML running at the backend can effectively do gameplay analysis and recognize winning or losing patterns. The same principle can be used to then provide valuable insights to employees in order to make them aware of their strengths and weaknesses. AI-based gamification can also greatly help find solutions to desired business questions with the help of a broad set of data, neural nets and deep learning. This helps employees get hypothetical outcomes and learn what the best strategy to perform a task could be. Upon performing well, employees get rewards, badges and leaderboards that influence human behaviour and fan the competitive fire to go an extra mile. For instance, Bunchball Nitro for Salesforce gamification motivates employees to sell more.

Engaging experience

What causes stress or fatigue can’t be engaging for long. The beauty of gamification is that it breaks down concepts into small chunks that the brain can master over time. When tasks or training sessions are cut into small sessions, employees don’t lose interest and retain what they have learnt for a very long time. A 3-5 minute window is usually the ideal choice for creating a microlearning nugget, as the learners are most focussed during that time and stay engaged to respond positively. Personalized offerings also add to engagement boost as employees get important suggestions to improve in specific areas they are having difficulties in.

More practical and contextual learning

By using Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), gamification can create a real-world simulation for game developers to learn and perform as in a real-life setting. A virtual and risk-free environment ensures that employees don’t shy away from making the choices they feel would work the best. If the choices don’t work, they learn from them and think of alternatives, and if they do, they get rewarded. Take sales for example, when a salesperson pitches in a real-world environment, they get first-hand experience of the choices they made and what worked for them and what not. Therefore, they get a more practical and contextual learning experience that will only make them competent enough to increase the conversion rates.

Changes Company’s Culture

According to a survey report by Achievers, less than 20% employees feel engaged at their respective places of work. Lack of appreciation, motivation, the feeling of not being a part of the company, not being heard and boring compliance training are among the major reasons behind an employee’s feeling of disengagement. If you are thinking about how much a higher salary factors in, it’s not among the top reasons when it comes to overall job satisfaction and engagement in its entirety.

Gamification can be a powerful solution to create a positive culture for every individual employee in a company. When done correctly, gamification activities effectively meet organisational goals and make employees take ownership of the tasks rather than taking work like daily chores. They synchronize themselves well with the company's goals and enjoy earning rewards and badges for top performances in competitions. This in turn brings them recognition and motivation to keep engaging and striving to add new skills. Remember, employees only engage to give their best every time, every day when they feel they are a part of the company and being heard, and gamification is a key to that at least till the time we get some other better tech solution.

A meta study from Gallup revealed that highly engaged teams result in 21% greater profitability. Also, employees who were highly engaged showed 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 17% increase in productivity. Gamification is a growing HR trend because it resolves their major challenge of motivating and retaining employees.

Enhances Teamwork and Collaboration

Setting up group competitions and challenges could be a perfect business strategy to achieve synchronized teamwork and next-level employee loyalty. Community and collaboration are the major reasons why multi-player games are so popular. This psychological driver can also be effectively used in gamification apps for high synergy between employees at the workplace to drive a higher rate of success.

A 2019 survey found that gamification made 89% employees feel more productive and 88% feel happier at work, with 33% saying that more game-like features will make their employee training software even better. More and more corporate offices are looking for at least one gamified app for employees and KPI management, but many of them are holding back because of technology challenges or not wanting to hire an in-house tech team for some obvious reasons.

Don’t worry! Logic Simplified keeps you covered here!

Logic Simplified imagines, innovates and creates some of the best gaming solutions for businesses of all sizes. We are really moved by the potential of gamification to revolutionize work places, even training. The team at Logic Simplified creates design and helps clearly define the rules of game activities so that your employees take a progressive path and add value to your business. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning game development could help pull off an even smarter gamified app, so yes, Logic Simplified will help you get the best of both worlds too. For any query related to gaming in general, and a gamification app for performance management best practices in particular, reach out us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we promise to get back to you shortly with a solution that will suit all your needs of managing staff performance.