Gamification in the Workplace: Real-life Examples and Benefits
In many workplaces, endless meetings and overwhelming to-do lists can make the daily grind feel monotonous. But what if your workdays were as exciting as a weekend game night? Through the strategic application of gamification in the workplace, this could become a reality. By incorporating game-like elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards, businesses can transform routine tasks into engaging challenges, improving employee engagement, and productivity.
In this blog, we’ll explore how gamification can revitalise your workplace. We’ll also provide practical examples of gamification in the workplace. and how it can deliver actionable insights that benefit your organisation.
What is Workplace Gamification?
Gamification involves adding game-like features to non-game areas, mainly used in the corporate world. Gamification uses rewards such as points, levels, badges, and challenges, among others, to enrich mundane work processes. The intent is to make this work engaging, motivating, and even fun-like playing a game.
Just as popular mobile games do, gamification in the corporate world introduces mechanics such as progressing through levels, achievement badges, and social interaction to make strong interpersonal relationships in the workplace. The idea is to make work tasks a little more fun, and competitive, adding more meaning and satisfaction with each thing done.
Now, imagine being allowed to turn your office into an engaging game board where everybody gets to play, not merely for the pay, but for recognition, growth, and a sense of accomplishment. These game mechanics create a win-win situation for all players concerned, thus giving birth to a culture of engagement and high performance.
Suggested Read: Gamification is the Future of Team Building
Advantages of Gamification in the Workplace
Improve Employee Engagement and Motivation
A great positive result of gamification when implemented into a company is the larger level of employee motivation and engagement. Gamification relies on the usual human needs for the burning urge to compete, achieve, and get recognition.
Astonishingly, according to research, 72% report that gamification motivates them to work harder and complete tasks more efficiently. Instead of going through monotonous training, workers can have fun with interactive learning modules and gamified training.
For example, at one point, Microsoft had very effectively gamified the contact centre agent training process by adding dynamic goals and personalised badges, leading to a 12% reduction in absenteeism and a 10% rise in calls per shift proof that gamification raises engagement very well.
Encourages Desired Behaviors
Gamification is an effective way to incentivise certain behaviours from employees, be those improving punctuality, raising the bar on sales performance, or encouraging continuous learning systems that allow for an incentive structure designed to promote such behaviours.
To avoid tardiness, employees can be awarded points, while completion of training modules is recognised with badges and outstanding overall performance is rewarded.
For example, Cisco used gamification to provide training on social media engagement under its "Aspire" program by constructing content pertaining to main job positions, such as sales executives and HR professionals.
They can go through levels and earn badges, which makes the learning environment proactive, yet fun to achieve new skills.
Provides Instant Feedback and Recognition
Another main advantage that comes with gamification is the provision of instantaneous feedback. This stands opposed to the traditional annual performance reviews whereby, through the use of the gamified system, employees are allowed to get feedback in real-time.
Completion of a sales target brings them a badge or steps them up on the leaderboard, giving them a sense of accomplishment.
This worked perfectly for IBM when 226% more course completions were recorded from the company's digital badge program and 694% more participants passed the end-of-course exam.
Such achievements in real time make the employees valued and help them maintain their enthusiasm for tasks.
Fosters healthy competition.
Healthy competition could be one of the major motivators for employees, so it is necessary to include gamification in daily activities. Leaderboards, challenges, and team-based goals will make them outdo their previous best or compete with colleagues in a friendly manner.
For instance, Webhelp introduced gamification with the purpose of raising agent engagement and enhancing short-term absence. Once they had added game-like features using Centrical's platform, they had a record of 50% less time to proficiency during onboarding and reduced short-term absences by 6%.
Development and learning enhancement Gamification works singularly well for learning and development. Rather than listening to hours of talks, employees can go through microlearning through gamified modules, doing quizzes, collecting badges, and achieving milestones. Integrated learning into the routine provides a self-paced and rewarding experience.
For example, Deloitte used gamification in its Leadership Academy by including missions, badges, and leaderboards, thus "unlocking secret levels." This yielded a 47% increase in week-over-week site returnees, thereby showing the power of gamification for encouraging ongoing education.
Improvement of retention ratio
Gamified onboarding, recognition, and career progressions have a greater positive effect on employee retention. Once employees get recognised there and see certain paths up via levels or achievements in the games, they will be more inclined to stay longer with the company.
Microsoft gamifies its onboarding programs, resulting in a 40% increase in employee retention. This shows how gamification can make new employees comfortable and engaged from the very first day.
Aligns Teams to Corporate Culture and Goals It aligns employees with the corporate culture and organisational goals by using game elements to reward teamwork or reinforce company values. For example, Siemens undertook gamification as a response to officers who grew up with games and technology.
According to its CEO, Barbara Humpton, gamification makes industrial technology intuitive like employee personal computers and gaming consoles, enabling the professionals to adapt seamlessly to the modern workplace tools. Examples of Gamification at the Workplace
Cisco – Social Media Training
Cisco applied gamification to its social media training programs under the initiative "Aspire". This gamified training program was customised for each profile; the sales executives learned the use of Twitter to generate more leads, and HR professionals enhanced their skills on LinkedIn. The "game" involved levels and badges that employees won along the way, thus making learning fun and personalised.
Microsoft – Contact Center Agent Training
Microsoft partnered with Centrical to introduce gamification into training for its contact centre service agents to enhance productivity and engagement.
Workers were given points and badges for reaching milestones, which hugely reduced absenteeism and increased engagement levels. This approach also resulted in an impressive number of agents-78%-reporting that they felt more empowered in their jobs.
IBM – Digital Badges
This is how IBM's digital badge program has illustrated that the gamification of learning could incentivise better employees to pursue and finish training. In the case of IBM, after completion of learning modules, employees were rewarded with digital badges.
Workers could boast about the badges on social networks. This concept not only gamified the competencies but even monetised the efforts put in, which helped increase program completion rates by 694%.
Siemens - Engaging the Digital Generation
Siemens brought gamification into industrial technology in order to make it more accessible for digitally native younger employees. Siemens has ensured their workplaces are future-ready with intuitive gadgets to integrate their processes with game-like principles, catering to the expectations of tech-savvy talent.
Deloitte – Leadership Academy
Gaming for professional development at the Leadership Academy of Deloitte is a very nice example: Employees undertake "missions," gain "badges," and progress through levels in a game-like structure the return visits to the platform and enhancing ongoing learning engagement.
How to Effectively Implement Gamification in the Workplace?
Set Any Goals and Rules
For gamification to really work, there has to be some goal and some rule implicit in the process. Clear goals and rules involve employees having an idea as to what is expected, how they engage in the process, and what the rewards will likely be. "Clearly defined rules" also translates into "fairness", which is terribly important if trust and enthusiasm are to be maintained.
Making Training Programs Game-like
Any form of learning is bound to be more interesting when gamified into the modules of training. Make the learning fun by incorporating quizzes, challenges, points, and levels. This would create a drive among employees in their quest to attend to skill improvement by applying what they have gained within their roles.
Give Meaningful Rewards
The mainstay of gamification is rewards. These don't have to be monetary in nature but can be in the form of extra days off, work from home, or public applause. Meaningful incentives are highly rewarding in improving job satisfaction and motivation.
Recognise Contributions and Achievements
Publicly recognising participation and achievement itself motivates consistent participation. Emphasising the progress in leaderboards or a digital version of the "wall of fame" helps to create a culture of appreciation and recognition of everybody's efforts.
Performance Monitoring and Feedback
Real-time analytics will allow observing employees' performances and participation. Dashboards show some metrics, such as participation levels, average score, and completion rate, that are visual representations showing how well your employees participate in a gamified system.
Gamification Risks and Challenges
While gamification has huge potential to transform workplace culture and productivity, it needs to be implemented in a very thoughtful manner so as not to fall into some major pitfalls of the technique.
- Avoid Gimmicks: If the gamification feels like some sort of gimmick to raise productivity, then your staff are going to take it for granted. Let the actual gameplay elements mean something tangible and give it a tie with the company's goals.
- Reward Quality-Not Just Quantity: Rewards should not be offered in such a way that employees sacrifice quality of work for quantity. Instead, the reward should be aligned with meaningful outcomes that benefit the business.
- Keep the dynamics: The reward and challenge should not be of the same nature as that would make things static, and, therefore, very soon the novelty will wear off. Add new activities, challenges, and rewards to maintain a high engagement level.
How CHOYS Can Help You Gamify Your Workplace
CHOYS can transform your workplace by gamifying employee engagement and well-being, making it fun and motivating. Through innovative features like the CHOYS Mood Tracker, CHOYS Steps Challenges, and the CHOYS Manual of You, the platform introduces fresh, dynamic ways to interact with employees and foster a positive work culture.
- Step Challenges: Create fun, competitive experiences with CHOYS Step Challenges, where employees participate in monthly and weekend competitions to increase their physical activity. These challenges not only promote healthy living but also help strengthen team bonding.
- Rewarding Mechanisms: CHOYS engages employees by offering a rewarding system that allows them to earn coins for completing challenges, tracking their moods, or updating their profiles. These coins can be used for charitable donations, turning wellness initiatives into a way to make a social impact.
- XP and Leveling System: CHOYS motivates users to stay active by allowing them to earn XP (experience points) for completing activities in the app, ranging from fitness challenges to mindfulness exercises. As they gain XP, they level up, and every time they do, their virtual Bok Choy plant grows, a fun and visual representation of their progress. Employees can track their progress on the leaderboard and compete with each other.
By integrating CHOYS into the workplace, you’ll inspire healthy habits, boost meaningful interactions, and foster a recognition-driven environment. This gamification leads to a well-being-centered workplace where employees feel engaged, appreciated, and motivated to improve both their personal and professional lives.
FAQs
Q. What is an example of gamification in the workplace?
An example of gamification in the workplace is using point-based systems or leaderboards to reward employees for completing tasks or hitting sales goals, encouraging healthy competition and engagement.
Q. How can gamification drive workplace performance?
Gamification drives performance by motivating employees through rewards, recognition, and a sense of achievement, which increases productivity and enhances focus on key objectives.
Q. How can gamification help your organisation?
Gamification can help organisations improve employee engagement, foster collaboration, and increase efficiency by making routine tasks more enjoyable and rewarding.
Q. How are companies using gamification?
Companies use gamification to enhance employee training, boost sales performance, and create engaging customer loyalty programs, using elements like challenges, points, and rewards to drive behaviours.