7 Practical Ways Gamification Can Help Your Business
The arrival of new motivational technologies — especially gamification technologies — has made it easier for employers to add a new, exciting dimension to their employee engagement efforts: game theory.
Gamification applications like Badgeville, Bunchball, and Hoopla, among others, allow employers to harness the passion one sees in the eyes of anyone locked deep in a game and leverage it for workplace tasks, particularly the ones that employees don’t like doing.
Used correctly, gamification tools could be ways to motivate staff members in specific departments or at specific times with almost surgical precision. Every business should have these advanced motivational tools in their arsenals by now — no excuses.
Are you holding out? Not buying it? Intimidated by the idea of gamification? You shouldn’t be. There are plenty of concrete, practical ways that gamification can boost your business. Here are a few examples:
1. Cold Calling
Many salespeople hate cold calling, updating sales management systems, or drawing up contract paperwork. Sales employees by and large prefer the excitement of presentations and “getting the yes.” In truth, you could use gamification to boost employee morale and engagement when it comes to any of these important, but horribly unsexy, activities. For example, run a competition to see who can make the most cold calls in a given week.
2. New IT Systems
Many people abhor change, and as a result, adoption rates of new IT systems are often very, very low. Why not gamify the process of adoption? Recognize and reward the innovators and early adopters, gently chide the laggards, and presto — adoption rates will rise dramatically.
3. Innovation
Are your employees set in their ways, too afraid to try out new ideas? Are you employees creative, but lacking the discipline and focus needed to see their innovations through to the end? You could try gamifying the innovation process by running “idea” and “execution” competitions.
Are employees happy to sit by themselves, eschewing collaboration in favor of self-imposed solitary confinement? Do even your most social employees refuse to step outside of their departments?
Gamify collaboration in your company by giving people points for doing things like making social connections across departments, attending meetings with other teams, and the like.
5. Self-Directed Learning
Encourage employees to take their development into their own hands by building a curriculum and then motivating employees to participate via gamified learning.
6. Workforce Well-Being
You can use gamification to encourage your employees to engage in healthy behaviors, and healthier workforces are more productive workforces.
7. Slow Days, Weeks, or Months
Gamification can be a great way to increase engagement over short periods of time in specific areas of the business. For example, is January a traditionally slow month? Why not gamify January to make sure employees leap into the new year with all they have?
The employee engagement problem hasn’t gone away yet — and it doesn’t look like it’s going to anytime soon. But your company doesn’t have to suffer. Gamification applications offer novel ways to engage your staff. Get your employees excited about work by making even the most mundane tasks into serious fun.