Gamification : The new age approach to engage employees 

As per a study by Gartner, 70% of Global 2000 companies use gamification in their processes.

With the changing demographic of the workforce, companies need to adapt to the new ways of engaging people. As of the recent survey, about 34% of the Indian population consists of millennials and more than 20% are Gen Zs. The important fact is, that most of the millennials are part of the workforce who are the largest contributors to the economic growth of the country. So, it is evident that traditional ways of engaging with employees may not work in today’s time. 

Gamification is popular and a buzzword in the corporate world. Companies are now open to trying these new age technologies to create more engagement in the workplace. 

Gamification is a process where corporates can gamify their people processes which adds an element of fun in the whole activity. For instance, as per a media report, a financial services company used gamification in their Learning management System (LMS), to engage people in learning. Gamification is not just used in learning, but there are solutions available which gamify the rewards and recognition system in the organisation. 

As per a study by Gartner, 70% of companies part of Global 2000 companies list, use gamification in their processes. So it is quite evident that organisations are heavily investing in gamification to enhance their employee experience and improve engagement. 

Before we understand how gamification helps, let’s explore how all processes can be gamified.

Communication

Communication is a vital and a tricky process. Having a feedback system in place as part of the communication process is a huge plus point. There are certain solutions which help to gamify group discussions. The medium of quizzes are used to make discussions more interactive and fruitful. As we are aware, discussion and long team meetings  do not attract people. Gamification of  this process through interactive feedback systems and an integrated quiz mode makes it interesting. 

Learning and Development

Learning and Development is a very strategic area which can actually provide a great edge to you over your competitors To make learning more fun, gamification of learning modules can help in making it more interactive, engaging and elements like leaderboard increases the motivation in employees. One leading financial services firm gamified its learning module where employees could just login to the learning platform through their smartphones and can start a learning module from anywhere. The company saw an increase in adoption rate and hours spent on learning by employees. If used smartly, gamification can really create a big impact in the organisation. 

Job Performance

Gamifying goals and rewards is an easy task. One of the firms actually did it for its sales and call centre teams. By achieving various goals based on their interests, people could unlock rewards and achievements. This can play a big role in increasing productivity and also performance in the organisation. Gamifying the goals and rewards creates an interest amongst employees and work does not feel like work but a ‘Fun Game.’

Onboarding

With the new technology available, you can automate your onboarding process. There are various tasks which are meant to be completed during an onboarding process to make the employee aware about the culture, leadership, product and business operations of the company. Moreover, the new employee also knows what he/she needs to do on the first day of job. Gamifying this process would mean ticking off the tasks which are completed and before the next task begins, the concerned staff is notified who needs to drive the next task.  

What are some of the benefits of Gamification? 

There are various benefits of gamification which can improve your employee experience index and create more engagement amongst people. 

It makes things ‘Fun’

Gamification adds an element of ‘Fun’ in any process. Take for an example the learning and training process. The traditional classroom learning gets really boring for people. After a point, people are disinterested in participating in the activity. If we gamify learning, adding a scoreboard, using digital technology and great graphics, can really make learning fun and can increase the adoption rate of the programme. Same goes with the onboarding process. The traditional ways of classroom orientations get monotonous, gamifying the process really creates excitement. 

Engagement and motivation increase

If you would remember, as a kid, when you played games, some of them were so engaging that you did not really wish to leave it. Moreover, when you are playing well, it further motivates you to play more. Similarly, this is how it works at the workplace as well. When the processes and activities are gamified, the engagement and motivation level increases in people. 

Adoption rate improves

There are certain activities, such as training, orientations, product demos and more which are usually found to be boring. Moreover, most of the time employees find it a waste of time. But one of the major metrics to measure the success of any HR programme is its adoption rate. When the gamification gets popular, naturally the adoption rate of that programme improves. Better the adoption rate of any HR activity gives a boost to the HR team as well.  

Gives you more data points 

When you are using digital means to drive HR processes, it also gives you various metrics such as usage, adoption rate, engagement rate which can help you to track the performance of your programme. HR has been seen as a support function rather than a strategic one. One of the reasons is that there were very few metrics available in the past to measure the effectiveness of the HR function. But with technologies like AI and gamification, it helps HR to get more data points and showcase its effectiveness to the board. 

Though companies have started using gamification but as of now, it is difficult to say how well it has worked for them. But with the new age workplace, this trend will get popular.