Despite gamification being able to offer solutions to daily workplace struggles, many organisations have been slow to adopt it into the workplace. But for those who have, they’re reaping the benefits and seeing the positive and successful impact it can have on improving things such as employee engagement, motivation and team morale.
Here are 5 key areas where employee gamification can benefit your business and change the way you work for the better.
1. Recruitment
The recruitment process can often be stressful and time-consuming for businesses. So much so that the average length of a job interview process is around 27.5 days. By getting candidates to complete a quiz or play relevant decision-making games, gamification is benefiting the business by limiting the time spent on reviewing applicants. Their answers to the questions will help highlight their skills and experience before being invited for an interview. It also gives the applicant an insight into how the company likes employees to learn and contribute in the future if hired.
When candidates reach the interview stage, it has become common to research and rehearse commonly asked interview questions. To avoid this and ensure businesses can get to know candidates better, gamification can simulate the work environment, mimicking daily tasks they would do and problems they’d face. Businesses can then test their problem-solving skills as well as see how they work under pressure. Gamification is especially useful here due to the immediate need to improve virtual recruitment.
2. Productivity
When employees are happy and engaged at work, their overall productivity is more likely to increase. By incorporating gamification mechanics such as staff leaderboards, it positively encourages competition and motivation to complete tasks. By rewarding points to those who are the most productive, others will then naturally want to follow-suit so that they’re seen to be higher up the leaderboard.
This also works well when employees feel rewarded for their increase in productivity. By offering vouchers or extra points for the leaderboard, staff have a goal they’re working towards and know they will be rewarded the more productive they are.
3. Connected Workforce
A connected workforce means employee communication, whether online or in-person, is improved, made easy and encouraged. Incorporating gamification into the workplace can connect various teams by giving them tools that enable even remote staff the best accessibility to company documents, apps and communication, improving group collaboration.
In order to keep teams connected even when it’s not possible to attend in person, organisations can use a gamified platform that can allow teams to perform tasks and stay connected no matter where they are or what device they have access to. For example, meetings or team-building events can be held online in the company app, helping to connect the workforce and increase morale.
This is particularly important since the need for many employees to become remote working. For those who are not used to this way of working, it can be easy to feel isolated from the rest of the team. Gamification can benefit your business and employees by being able to open up a line of communication and, encourage collaboration and create a sense of community.
4. Talent Management
The main need for talent management is to ensure businesses recruit, develop, and retain the best talent possible. Adopting gamification will help towards retaining valuable employees as well as encouraging them to help meet your business goals.
Corporate training can be seen as a mundane task, with gamification, staff’s concentration can be increased as well as their engagement. Interactive and fun quizzes help with knowledge retention, leading to staff being able to adopt a lot more of what they’ve learnt into daily work life.
As well as this, a points system can be adopted throughout learning and development to help motivate employees to complete training modules. These points can then be displayed on an office leaderboard to create healthy competition and encourage more employees to follow-suit. Doing this benefits both staff and the business as it shows their progression and personal development is important, meaning they’re more inclined to want to learn.
5. Workforce Wellbeing
Gamification in the workplace has the ability to make the entire workforce feel more relaxed, appreciated and productive. With teams now often being spread across the globe, gamification can bring them together by improving communication and encouraging teams to connect and grow their relationships online with virtual team-building meets and games.
Even more, by making daily work tasks more fun and engaging, employees physical, mental and social wellbeing can be dramatically improved. For example, gamification can be used to create reminders for staff to take regular breaks, doing so can help towards reducing stress which is something that can positively benefit their mental health.
As well as this, it can sometimes be difficult for staff to voice their opinions or suggestions to management. Gamification platforms can make having these conversations with different members of the team more accessible, creating a happier workplace where employees feel listened to and valued, something which can help improve mental health and general workforce wellbeing.