Having engaged employees is vital to the success of any organization. Happy employees create great experiences for customers, are less likely to leave, and most importantly enjoy their working life. We have written a number of great articles on how applying game mechanics to your employee engagement strategy improves employee happiness, productivity, and training. However, to truly understand which mechanics will work best for your employees, we have outlined what a game mechanic is, how they work for engaging employees and why:
What is a game mechanic?
It’s important to note that a game mechanic, whilst mentions game explicitly in the title, does not always involve as actual game. Engagement journeys, created with game mechanics, use specific elements of game science to encourage engagement. These range from earning badges and points, to feedback surveys and quizzes.
Here’s how certain mechanics work to engage your employees and why:
1 – Points, Badges, and Achievement Walls
When looking to encourage employees to either change or maintain a positive action, like completing a training module or attending an event, applying points, and awarding badges is an excellent motivator. Additionally, if you combine points and badges with an achievement wall, employees will be able to see their progress and you will be able to easily keep track and reward employees for these achievements.
Using our Voco platform, we worked with National Australia Bank to do exactly this. We created a personalized interactive training journey that engaged users with bite-sized content including interactive videos, customer scenarios, and follow-up assessments. We used leader board ranking, badges, an achievement wall, and prize draw rewards to ensure the Bank’s employees were motivated by their desire to take part in a company activity and by the rewards offered to complete the learning program.
2 – Quizzes
Training employees correctly is one of the most important steps when onboarding a new team member. However, traditional approaches to training lack any element of fun and are therefore ineffective ways to engage employees. By gamifying a quiz and combining this with a visible learning journey and leader board you can encourage healthy competition amongst your employees, while also being able to track each team members progress.
Gamified quizzes increase enthusiasm to complete training with a cycle of challenge, achievement, and reward. This tried-and-tested approach creates a value exchange, which incentivizes the completion of activities, consumption of learning materials, and – most importantly – boosts engagement, attention, and learning.
3 – Survey Mechanics
Do you know how engaged your employees are currently? If not, you could be risk of increasingly higher staff turnover. A gamified survey is a great way to help identify employee problems and introduces a new and interesting way to encourage communication between you and your employees.
Gamified surveys are more engaging and fun, increasing your employees’ motivation to complete the survey and provide their thoughts and feelings in a safe space. We have worked with many companies who have added a gamified survey to their audience engagement strategy, including Casual Dining Group, Zizzi, and Visit Scotland, to improve response rates and the quality of self-reported data. Sometimes companies do use a specific game to encourage engagement with a survey. Bella Italia for example used a once daily play ‘Scratch and Win’ game which encouraged users to provide self-reported data in return for restaurant rewards and additional game plays.
Gamified surveys work excellently as it ensures your employee feels like their views are both welcomed and listened to and you are also providing an engaging experience for your employee while they share their ideas, make suggestions, and provide feedback.
How we can help
Driving employee engagement has significant impact on an organization’s success. Motivated, satisfied workers dedicate themselves to the positive progress of a company, which in turn has cumulative benefits for any business. Companies with engaged employees see 233% greater customer loyalty, which translates into a 26% annual increase in revenue. 3radical understands how important it is to support and inform your team. By equipping your company with the power of gamification, we can help you educate your employees on the pertinent aspects of your organization. 3radical’s online experiences use an Earned Data approach to help capture employee preferences to help organizations understand employee motivations and intents to reduce friction, encourage interaction and foster loyalty. Contact us today to find out more