No matter how much we all enjoy our jobs, there are sometimes things that can seem boring or repetitive. When implementing new processes or necessary training, executives may find it difficult to overcome the inertia of their teams. Fortunately, gamification is a potential remedy that more and more businesses are using.
Through a system of friendly competition and prizes, gamification can motivate your team by making many “regular” corporate activities more pleasurable for its members. Let’s see how exactly!
Why Gamification is Effective?
Gamification essentially relies on the notion that humans are competitive creatures who, at the same time enjoy games throughout life both in childhood and adulthood. To support both hypotheses, one only needs to mention the enormous popularity of sports.
There are a number of scientific hypotheses that explain why games are significant in nature. Based on the observation that play in animals frequently imitates adult themes of survival, the “play as preparation” theory was developed.
Additionally, it has been discovered that play helps in decision making and molding the brain, resulting in a more effective brain. It is also a survival skill in and of itself, assisting animals in learning to adapt and improvise their behaviors and responses more successfully.
Games also stimulate the “motivational engines” in our brains. Dopamine is a hormone that is released as a reaction to a sudden reward that makes us feel excited and happy. It acts as a chemical messenger that spreads the signal of satisfaction that is often present when playing games.
For that reason let’s see how and when can you implement gamification strategies to motivate your team!
Increase Competition
Everyone enjoys a good rivalry, right? If someone is on the treadmill next to you, you move a little more quickly. Similar to how you could step up your game and start calling more clients to close more deals if someone else is closing more deals.
Competition is ingrained in human nature. Inherent to who we are as people is the desire for competition. We were born to compete and as long as it’s that healthy competition among colleagues, there’s nothing to worry about.
For example, you can include special bonuses, awards, or recognitions for the best employee in your sales team every month. By choosing an MVP, you will motivate the team to better their results and ultimately improve sales performance.
Dynamic Leaderboards
An interesting workplace and higher employee productivity can both be achieved with a little friendly rivalry. A method to make this rivalry more game-like is to create a leaderboard based on points.
Sales representatives and other top-performing employees who want to be the best will find this employee gamification strategy very beneficial!
Make Work Meaningful
Work is more than simply a 9 to 5 job. It’s where we spend the majority of our time and is frequently essential to a strong sense of self-worth. Employees are motivated to work hard when given significant rewards that make them feel appreciated via a well-designed gamification strategy.
This can take many different forms, including praise, enhanced role autonomy, peer or manager recognition, and, of course, tangible rewards.
Mastering New Skills
When we have complete understanding of or proficiency in something, we can do challenging activities more quickly and with higher-quality results. We must perform tasks repeatedly in order to master them. However, repetition is tiresome and dull. How then can you make achieving mastery easy, engaging, and enjoyable? Reward them, simple!
Attendance at Internal Training Sessions
Achieving a goal while fostering friendly rivalry and camaraderie within is made possible via gamification. Consider internal training as one example.
Employees frequently lack the motivation to participate in internal training programs. However, gamifying the process will increase the likelihood that staff members will benefit from the training.
Stimulating Cooperation
Collaboration motivates us to work more, but in a somewhat different way than rivalry. It creates shared objectives for a group to accomplish as a whole, as opposed to competition, which throws people against one another—individually or in teams.
Gamification fosters a culture of cooperation and drives everyone’s ongoing improvement. People are more likely to talk about their own and others’ actions and offer knowledge whenever it is possible because it also enhances transparency.
Platforms for Internal Communications
Employee adoption of communication and collaboration tools, like Zoom or Slack, can be aided thanks to gamification.
Make it competitive by adding points, badges, rewards, or other incentives to calls, meetings, chats, and other activities. This can boost participation, knowledge retention, and adoption rates. You can also boost attendee engagement in meetings and events with event gamification.
Goal-Setting and Objectives
When someone wants to accomplish something, there is a reason why so many individuals make objectives. It motivates them and makes them more responsible for finishing assignments. However, lack of clarity and precision often results in goal abandonment, which causes dissatisfaction and exhaustion, and finally a failure.
The likelihood of achieving and exceeding individual, team, and organization goals increase significantly when goal-setting is easy and specific. The most successful goals are those that are precise and have a deadline.
Set up time limits and assessable targets with gamification tools. Thanks to it, you can also establish recurring objectives, such as weekly or monthly budgets.
Travel Events Based on Qualifications
Travel incentives are an effective motivator. For the possibility to be eligible for a unique trip, employees will put in a lot of effort.
Gamification for employee engagement and engaged workforce in general is significant in part because it uses limited, high-risk rewards. Make sure that every group in your staff has something to strive for!
Gamification in Onboarding
The traditional onboarding process is no longer necessary because of the diversity of today’s workforce and the major shift toward a mixed working environment.
Gamified onboarding is an effective onboarding approach because of its ease of application in hybrid (online, virtual, and in-person) work environments.
Remember that people analytics technology — a technology created specifically to gather and utilize people data—has assisted numerous organizations in making better decisions. Tools like Applicant Tracking Systems can also make the hiring and onboarding process significantly easier for employers.
To Play, or Not to Play
People that get immediate feedback can evaluate their performance right away and adjust their behavior as needed. If they are performing well, they might be happy and continue on. If they are not performing well, they might change their direction and look for patterns that might help them in the future.
Employees have control and ownership over their work in both scenarios, which is likely to increase their happiness and productivity.
Understanding how to use gamification to motivate your team is essential for carrying out your set goals successfully. In order to develop the proper kinds of incentives into your gamification process, be sure to carefully pay attention to the particular demands and motivations of each of your employees.
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Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her white little bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.
