The level of productivity in the workplace relies heavily on the decisions your employees choose to make every day. However, how organisations choose to treat their employees plays a huge role in affecting those choices, as well as their overall engagement.
It’s been shown that as engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees, it’s important for organisations to provide staff with techniques that encourage them to perform at their best, especially now that remote working has become the new norm for many businesses.
We have outlined below how the use of gamification mechanics can provide employee engagement solutions for onboarding through to offboarding that will help to boost overall employee productivity when working in the office or remotely.
Onboarding & Induction
The first day of a new job can be nerve-wracking and isn’t always the most productive, therefore, it’s important employers uphold an onboarding process that minimises stress, is interactive and displays the positive values your business offers. Getting this right from the start also sets the precedent of how you want them to learn and engage in the future.
During these times when interviews and onboarding are now done remotely, it’s vital that, through the application of gamification mechanics, you’re providing them with a first day that is productive, inclusive and encouraging continued high-level employee engagement.
Whether they’re working from home or in the office, it’s easy for employees to feel isolated on their first day. To avoid this, gamification mechanics can be utilised to help set and manageable goals and tasks for employees to achieve, helping to reduce the overwhelm of their onboarding. Following completion, employees can be rewarded with certificates and badges, helping boost confidence and encourage their continued productivity.
Offboarding & Knowledge Transfer
The process of offboarding an employee is equally as important as onboarding and how they’re treated during this process can be crucial when wanting to display compassion and ensure their final days with the company are still as productive as possible.
Although this employee is leaving, gamification mechanics can be used during the offboarding process in order to improve the relationships and productivity of remaining staff members. For example, by using questionnaires, face to face chats or video calls for remote workers, you are able to ask for feedback on ways your business could drive change and detect any issues that can be resolved and improve future engagement throughout the company.
As well as this, the task of knowledge transfer can be eased and gamified for the employee by offering them the tools to create bite-sized videos of their daily tasks and folders. Other employees can then receive redeemable points when it is viewed.
Resources & Processes
Learning and actioning processes and resources can be tedious tasks; however, when placed within reward frameworks, ‘required learning’ becomes enjoyable and less daunting for your employees.
By using badges or redeemable points, employees are more likely to follow the correct processes from day to day and utilise accurate business resources. Gamification makes these tasks more user friendly, encourages knowledge retention and boosts overall productivity. If staff are given a clearer path when needing to find the right resources, overall knowledge retention is improved and employee engagement increased.
Regulations
When wanting to ensure employees understand and adhere to company regulations, gamification techniques such as quizzes can be used for regular knowledge checks. By making sure staff are aware of what is expected of them, it helps towards creating a working environment where they feel safe and comfortable enough to do their job effectively, thus, improving their overall productivity.
For remote staff especially, it can be more difficult to encourage them to spend time refreshing themselves with company regulations, make this easier and more memorable by ensuring quizzes are light-hearted and gamified.
By making the content more fun and memorable without the need for completion coming across as dogmatic. Employees can become more comfortable knowing the regulations and that their safety is important, resulting in higher morale, increased productivity and improved colleague engagement.
Remote working
For those employees who have recently been thrown into working remotely, it can be difficult to navigate and adjust to their new working reality. To show they’re trusted and supported whilst working from home, gamification can be used to set-up regular team meetings as well as light-hearted online games which encourage regular interaction and avoid employees feeling isolated.
Even more, planning your day and sticking to work hours can be difficult when you’re out of the office environment, by using mechanics that set up automatic ‘take a break’ reminders, you’re ensuring employees are able to maximise their productivity and overall job satisfaction.
If you’re looking for more ways you can leverage gamification in the above 5 areas, the 3radical Voco platform can help organisations create centralised hubs of learning materials and personalised learning journeys that enable you to increase motivation and engage your employees.