Game On: Mix Work and Play in your Office with Gamification

All work and no play has been universally shunned, thanks to Jack — and his unwillingness to be a dull boy. However, in an age where work is increasingly taking over our lives, maintaining this balance becomes more complex.

How do you motivate your teams to keep up the work, especially when they’re operating in silos in a pandemic-induced remote set-up? The best thing to do is to make them feel connected by employing gamification strategies. This can be done remotely and simply by using cloud communication tools.

Let’s begin by understanding the term ‘gamification’.

If you’ve ever collected frequent flyer miles to unlock benefits, you’ve experienced gamification. If you purchase extra drinks at Starbucks to claim your reward points before the deadline, you’ve been gamified.

As the name suggests, gamification refers to the practice of adopting gaming elements like score-keeping, challenges, prizes, etc. to other areas — which, in our case, is the business realm or the workplace. Such practices bring excitement into an otherwise mundane routine task.

The concept has really gained traction over the years. In fact, the term ‘gamification’ has been a buzzword since 2011, a rise that you can see in Google Trends.

Google Trends, Worldwide, 2004-present

It’s all in the mind

Gaming elements evoke strong emotions in humans — excitement, happiness, intrigue, and more. These emotions lead to a positive experience that keeps the users engaged and better connected.

Besides a better experience, it also makes us feel in charge. We know our goals, we know what we have to do — and it’s broken down into smaller and more direct challenges for us. This also adds a feeling of accomplishment.

Even if you’ve never studied psychology, you might be aware of the principles of positive reinforcement. Basically: you do well, you get rewarded, so you do well again. Positive behaviours are rewarded in a gamified set-up in a similar fashion. These rewards instil a sense of validation in the participants and encourage them to perform even better.

Loss aversion is yet another motivator for improved performance. After all, no one likes losing. This evokes a competitive feeling, hence encouraging people to keep improving.

How does this relate to employees in your business?

• By setting up daily challenges and rewards, you make your employees feel involved in and engaged with the organisation. They’re more motivated to complete tasks on time and partake in friendly competitions with their colleagues’, hence beating their own records and improving their overall productivity.
• You can improve your flow of operations by conducting small-scale challenges (or games) that correspond to your work goals. So, everyone does their part efficiently and you get a well-oiled machine that delivers constantly.
• Another overlooked benefit of gamification is that it can boost your teams’ collaboration. If you create team challenges or reward tasks that require coordinated efforts, you’re allowing your staff to get comfortable and achieve better results in working together.

This has long-term benefits of improving teamwork, especially for complex and time-sensitive projects.

So that covers the why part.

The bigger question still remains: how?

Don’t be intimidated by complex-sounding psychological terms in your research. Achieving successful gamification is quite simple, especially when you follow certain tips.

The techniques of gamification for a business model

As discussed earlier, your goal here is to reward desired behaviours and allow your teams to master their tasks. So, what gaming elements do you think would aid you in doing that?

• Levels
• Badges
• Leaderboard
• Challenges or quests
• Progress bars

These terms are not foreign to anyone. We’ve all enjoyed a game or two at some point in our life, and these terms are often present in games to give the player an idea of their progression or mastery.

Levels indicate the experience and success you’ve gained through the game. You can reward higher levels with greater incentives. So, someone on level 5 could potentially avail greater benefits than someone on level 1. By holding cloud conference calls, you can announce the winners and motivate other people to level up their game as well.

Badges are a great way of acknowledging and expressing gratitude to exceptional performers. You can announce winners of the badges via email blasts or bulk SMSes. Furthermore, top management may connect with these winners over cloud calls for more personalised congratulations.

An online leaderboard keeps everyone on their toes. On cloud-based online portals, you can see real-time progress of your colleagues and project success. The same portal will have a dashboard that presents your current progress and performance related analytics.

Of course, the most important aspect of gamification is how you frame your tasks. A series of challenges with certain deadlines ensures that the required tasks get done in a timely manner. Announce new challenges via SMS and email broadcasts to reach all your employees at once.

You can make things more interesting by introducing quests. There needs to be a final goal or treasure that one can unlock only after completing smaller quests. This might encourage employees to go beyond the realm of regular business practices and perform creatively.

You can also boost collaboration by making these quests team-dependent. Instant messaging, conference calls and screen sharing will prove to be of massive help.

There’s a lot of scope to be innovative here since the goal anyway is to break the monotony and have fun while improving efficiency.

But before you go off and do that, here are some things you should keep in mind while gamifying your business:

1. Look at the big picture

Planning out a gamification strategy isn’t a short-term or one-time thing. It only works well if it’s well-thought-out for a long period.

So, you shouldn’t simply start off without a direction in mind. A series of small challenges should lead up to or prepare teams for a bigger project. When your in-game rewards are aligned with tangible work progress, employees feel more validated and realise that, at the end of the day, there is a purpose to their efforts.

2. Don’t put too much emphasis on rewards

In line with the first point, your rewards shouldn’t go overboard right from the start. If you pull out the big guns from the get-go, there’s no motivation to continue working with the same gusto. And you’ll face issues funding large-scale prizes all the time.

Your staff also needs to realise that the goal eventually is to perform for the business and not solely for the rewards. Thus, any prizes you give need to be in moderation. They could preferably be related to the business or something that would improve your staff’s productivity. For example, one of the rewards could be free coffee coupons to help one stay focused.

3. Encourage participation

Keeping a “winner takes it all” or “there can only be one winner” approach is counterproductive (and let’s face it, quite immature). When everyone has worked hard for the greater good of the company, you shouldn’t neglect those who didn’t reap higher returns.

After all, every bit of contribution matters for the big picture. Instead, work on motivating the participants for the next turn. It’s a good idea to have participation points as well to keep spirits high.

4. Equal footing for all

Parents can’t pick a favourite child. And you can’t have favouritism in your organisation either. That’s just a recipe for disaster.

Make sure that your competitions are open to all and everyone is equipped with the tools that help them achieve their respective goals.

If someone requires further training, by all means, go ahead. You can have video conference sessions with experts or share relevant call recordings to develop your teams’ skills.

Conclusion

Bring out the gamers in your employees by using innovative gamification strategies. For instance, you can spice up your operations with a throwback to your staff’s youth.

Overall, there’s nothing to lose. You get more engaged and productive employees, and your work process gets streamlined too. At the same time, you can assess how your teams perform under pressure. As a leader, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team members. This information will be invaluable for all future endeavours as well.

Have you tried to implement gamification in your business? What steps did you find useful? Let us know in the comments below!