Gamification can be an interesting idea for companies to get even more results from employees, who feel more motivated to carry out their daily activities.
Games have always been present in people’s lives as a form of entertainment. The novelty is that, now, they are also becoming a craze in the corporate world, after all, have you ever realized how a game is able to keep people’s attention?
Fun can make work more pleasurable. That’s why business games have been widely used as a strategy to achieve better results.
Curious to know more about the topic? Read the article and discover how gamification in companies can make your team more productive!
What gamification or gamification?
Gamification itself is a very simple concept: it’s about using techniques and strategies with a gaming touch. It is possible to insert game design in different contexts, from school to work.
This technique aims to generate engagement and increase productivity with a renewed focus and determination.
Of course, even though it’s a joke, it’s in a serious context, that is, it has “big people” goals. This is done to achieve personal or collective goals and objectives.
Why does gamification work?
When playing, the contributor has virtually automatic feedback in the form of tangible rewards and points. Practically everyone likes some kind of approval and this is a concrete way to get it.
Not only, this is a technique that moves the collective sense, stimulating competitiveness and the search for reward and overcoming. In fact, it is important to keep in mind the amount of competition that you want to stimulate within the company so that this does not become a negative practice.
What is gamification in companies?
Gamification consists of encouraging high-performance people or teams to achieve an important goal through games, turning duty into something fun.
It’s an excellent strategy to shake things up a bit, allowing employees to be much more engaged with the company’s goals. These fictitious points can be much more motivating than various internal marketing activities.
Imagine a sales area where professionals need to hit their targets. In this scenario, where there is often a lot of pressure, gamification can bring another approach to something that would otherwise be a problem, relieving tension.
Both in companies and in games, it is necessary to overcome challenges to achieve a result. However, inserting this into a “game”, such as a race, for example, relaxes the environment and encourages people to achieve a common goal.
This is a good example of how to motivate a team and increase its productivity. But since every game offers a prize, it’s important to think about the rewards for engagement.
5 keys to keep in mind about business gamification
1. The app experience evolves with the user
I t is important to think of the product as an experience in which the user is going to interfere. Create an app that evolves progressively. Start first with a tutorial that explains to the consumer what to do and after a few days basic missions are introduced.
In this way, little by little, the commitment to the application becomes stronger and we manage to capture our client and his acquaintances to whom he will recommend the application. During this process it is essential to know how to adapt to all users depending on their experience and characteristics.
2. It aims to identify the “Core Loop”
What do we want the consumer to do during the game? Identify and clearly define what key actions users perform, what the rewards will be so that they feel that they are progressing in the game.
Being unclear about goals and rewards can lead to boredom and business gamification failure. Participants must sense a progressive advance to achieve effective loyalty.
3. Offer limited resources
Players need to test their intelligence and limiting resources by time or lives maximizes the experience of the user who will try to use all his ingenuity for the app.
MASTER IN GAMIFICATION
These limits have to be spent autonomously and renewed as a prize or by allowing time to pass. These types of strategies increase customer retention within the app, who will log in more times and may even pay for that extra.
4. Foster a sense of ownership
We all like to have something of our own during the development of the game, be it an avatar or a space to design and unleash our creativity.
All the most popular apps offer these strategies so that in exchange for achievements the user can easily edit their space. This causes greater affinity for the game and the product and its whole.
5. Integrate the social experience into the app
Creating a social community around our product is key to building consumer loyalty. Getting users to organize or share their experience in real time through social networks will enhance the feedback and promotion of our app.
How does gamification work in companies?
For a gamification strategy in companies to work, managers must know well the organization’s goals and how they can be achieved. See some examples:
- Create a question and answer game to test the team’s knowledge of a new product;
- Develop game-based leadership training and reward top performers, increasing adherence and effectiveness;
- Stipulate the sales target and offer an attractive prize to those who achieve it;
- Encourage employees to create solutions to problems , rewarding those who come up with the best idea.
How to implement the technique in the company
The concept of gamification is relatively simple, however, many people may be confused about how to implement the system in the business environment. To create an effective system, it is necessary to keep a few points in mind:
1. Create a clear scoring and leveling system
For a game to be captivating, it must have a series of challenges to complete. These can be levels that can be reached through a score, for example.
Points can be given to those who meet a sales target for the day, a number of customers served and even the volume of work delivered. Study the workflow well and identify what can be scored.
2. Offer rewards
Having no rewards is a great way to create a boring game. If there’s no clear motivation why the developer should take the time to learn about the game and engage with it, he simply won’t.
If you can’t think of something, why not create a custom company store? In this way, the employee could exchange the points obtained for real products, it can be a portable charger with the company’s brand, for example.
3. Stimulate competition
A little competitive spirit is the spice every team needs to destroy all their enemies. With less animated spirits (at least in the office), it is possible to make those involved even more engaged with corporate gamification.
Using the previous game example, it is possible to have limited items in the brand store to stimulate competitiveness.
How to choose the most suitable game type?
Games in the corporate environment can be physical or electronic. This choice depends a lot on what you intend to achieve and also on the characteristics of your target audience.
For example, if you need to encourage interaction between teams, why not invite them to a “face to face” game, where people can get to know each other better and discover each other’s characteristics?
If the objective is to test and improve skills, the ideal is to bet on electronic games, such as the famous quizzes (questions and answers) or simulators, which will represent real situations of the work routine in a virtual environment.
This solution can be very useful to assess how employees act, if they know the rules, if they are complied with, etc. All of this impacts productivity at work .
What are the benefits of adopting gamification in companies?
Gamification is a very effective tool for managing people, as it allows evaluating the performance of professionals as they progress through the games. Knowing the skills and characteristics of each one, it is possible to draw an individual development plan.
Other benefits of using this strategy are:
Increases knowledge retention
By using this strategy, it is much more fun to learn the company’s processes, after all, the points depend on this knowledge.
Team work
Getting several people to collaborate for a common good is not easy, so using a little push is a great shortcut to building resilient teams that deliver quality work.
Attention and focus
A game demands a lot of attention from its players. As it is closely linked to work tasks, it encourages focus on everyday tasks that, in any other context, could be tedious.
