4 Reasons why gamification is the future of the workplace

Whatever the future of work looks like, gamification will be there.

The future of the workplace is on everyone’s mind lately, and with good reason – the world we live in and the way we do things are changing rapidly and the businesses that will ultimately succeed in this challenging climate are those that are willing and able to limber up and roll with the punches. This is where future-focussed technology applications like gamification comes in.

What exactly is gamification?

In a nutshell, the principle of gamification refers to the application of game mechanics in non-game activities and processes, in order to engage, influence and motivate user interaction by enhancing the overall experience. In the business sphere, gamification is often integrated into website mechanics, business services, online communities, content portals, marketing campaigns and internal communication processes. The overall aim is to deeply engage with employees in order to drive certain behaviours that are key to the accomplishment of vital business goals.

As a practical example, Cisco Systems (an American multinational technology conglomerate) leveraged team challenges to enrich internal competition. They wanted their social media to be a company asset, so they created a gamified training program that challenged their employees to become worthy brand ambassadors by gaining specialist, strategist, and master certifications based on increased knowledge and experience.

Why does it work so well?

Gamification is an extremely effective business tool because it taps straight into every human’s innate emotional need to be rewarded, level up in status, achieve goals and engage in competition. By gamifying an experience, you are providing employees with two important things: 1) control over what they’re doing and, 2) clear markers that show their progress and guide them to future actions. This is a foolproof recipe to promote wanted behaviours if ever there was one.

4 Ways gamification can supercharge your workplace

Here are 4 proven ways gamification can supercharge your workplace in 2020 and beyond.

3. It makes learning fun. Ongoing learning is a vital component of a strong business model. Successful companies like Deloitte understand this all too well. This is why they chose to link gamification and behavioural science to transform leadership development in their Deloitte Leadership Academy training program. The result was an impressive 37% rise in week-on-week engagement on their digital platform.
In order to encourage each employee to take ownership of their training experience and progress, their approach was to make the process personal to each individual user – leaderboards were customised to show which colleagues were giving them a run for their money in terms of organisational standing. There was also a very detailed onboarding component that familiarised users with the program and the gamification elements that underpin the process.
READ MORE: Recognising the benefits of gamification elements in e-learning

2. Game-based interaction boots employee engagement. Gamification can be used to encourage employee motivation and improve overall productivity by creating a system of goals, achievement and rewards that simultaneously boosts employee satisfaction and inspires top performance. Real-time feedback and task visibility can have a big impact on speed and focus on the job. For instance, an online, scalable CRM that features a team leaderboard, progress bar, and customisable challenges can be used to promote healthy competition among a sales force.

3. It clearly communicates your company culture. A robust, well-defined company culture is one of the most effective tools in the modern-day HR arsenal – if you want your people to chase certain ideals and adopt certain behaviours, they need to know what those are straight off the bat. In fact, it actually starts with the way you find and attract top talent to your company. Here, the U.S. Army has to be applauded for their ingenious use of gamification principles to rope in new recruits. The land warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces has been using digital games for training purposes for a long time, and recently turned to widespread gamification of these well-crafted games to promote awareness of their training program among the public, and attract new recruits.

4. Gamified wellness programs are immensely effective. Healthy employees are productive employees, and at this time, a strong focus on a sustainable work-life balance has never been more important. Gamification principles can be used to great effect in corporate wellness programs, much in the same way as it is used by established branded apps like Discovery’s Vitality Active Rewards, Nike+ Run Club and Strava for runners and cyclists. While the focus of an internal wellness program doesn’t always have to be the promotion of physical fitness alone, the competition element it hinges on can still be leveraged to great effect to encourage participation in all sorts of healthy behaviours.

Sound good? That’s because it is! Find out how gamification can be used to supercharge your employee engagement and drive your bottom line business goals all in one fell swoop – contact us today. We live and breathe gamification and the PLAYA team will help you to usher in the future of the workplace at your place of business without missing a beat. Here’s to building thriving businesses that are nimble enough to take on the challenges of a brave new world!

How to keep employees engaged with gamification

There’s no shortcut to the promised land of employee engagement, but gamification can get you moving in the right direction.

It can even get you there, if your strategy is solid, sustainable and skilfully managed. The big question is, can it keep you there?

What is engagement?

Definitions of employee engagement at work abound in academic and practitioner literature, but to get to the heart of the matter, many popular examples reference emotional commitment and engagement as key indicators.

‘Engaged employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace’ (Gallup)
‘Engagement is employees’ willingness and ability to contribute to company success’ (Willis Towers Watson)
‘Employee engagement is the level of an employee’s psychological investment in their organisation’ (Aon Hewitt)
‘Engagement typically refers to an employee’s job satisfaction, loyalty, and inclination to expend discretionary effort toward organisational goals. (Deloitte)

Definitions aside, the more useful question from a gamification design perspective may be, ‘What does engagement look like?’ And for that matter, ‘What does disengagement look like? Gamification is all about changing behaviour, so what that behaviour looks like matters.

What does employee engagement look like?

When you’ve got engagement

The end-game of engagement is, of course, better work performance and gamification can help get you there. From an employee perspective, here are a few sample stats from a 2019 Gamification at work survey.

Employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%) and happier (88%) at work
33% would like more game-like features in their employee training software
61% of the respondents receive training with gamification
87% said game elements provide a sense of meaning and purpose at work (81% in the 2018 survey)
89% believe they’d be more productive if their work was more gamified
78% of the respondents say that gamification in the recruiting process would make a company more desirable

When the thrill is gone

What do you do when the gamification thrill is gone? When user numbers drop, missions are abandoned and work performance metrics are on the slide? In other words, when employees are actively disengaged with gamification and the work. There are any number of places to look for potential problems. But start with the obvious.

Gamification is a program, not a project, remember, so you need to plan and budget for the long haul to be successful. Do a big picture assessment of the many moving parts of your gamification strategy with this brief Q&A:

Are you clear on the objectives of your program? You’ll go nowhere fast without a clearly defined statement of the business objectives for your gamification solution. You want higher levels of engagement, but what actual business outcomes are you looking for?
Have you correctly identified the metrics to measure your user’s behaviour? These are a helpful sanity check throughout design and implementation. Maybe you’ve missed the mark at some point along the way?
Are you using the right motivators for your specific user group? Did you do the upfront research to get a true understanding of your user’s needs, values, aspirations and attitudes? What makes employees feel happy and fulfilled? The objective is to design activities that users find intrinsically motivating to spark their desire for learning, professional growth and personal development.
Is the user experience lacking depth? Design is where so many gamification efforts fall apart. Maybe you need to change your story and beef up your narrative structure. Have you introduced enough challenges and included multiple decision trees to draw users in and stimulate higher levels of engagement? Look at your countdowns, time limits and feedback loops to identify weaknesses.
Did you test before launching the system? If not, you may have inadvertently created your own problems from the start. Review, retest, and listen closely to the feedback. In fact, never stop listening, it’s an important part of the necessary on-going program adaptations. To keep employees engaged and motivated, you need to keep the user experience fresh and challenging.
Did you plan for player fatigue? Aha! Thought not. Let’s refresh.

Find advice on avoiding epic failures in 9 Reasons gamification fails

How did it go so wrong?

You worked with the best gamification designers, you followed all the best practice design advice, you encouraged employee participation and launched to great uptake. And now – you’re looking at near flatline participation and performance. So how did it all go so wrong? Player fatigue.

At some point in planning and development you read advice along the lines of, “It is important to plan for player fatigue…as time goes by and the novelty wears off, player engagement and delight may go down as well.” Or, more emphatic guidance, “…any application that is gamified will interest users for a while, but as soon as the novelty rubs off, participation drops rapidly.” And you thought, ‘Check that – we’ve got a great narrative, perfect mechanics, no problem’. Think again.

Keep the releases coming

You would be amazed (or maybe not so much, now that you’ve experienced it) how quickly people chew through content.

For Sipho, the challenge of opening the secret vault is interesting…once…as is finding the hidden trove of gold bars. And if there’s no new challenge to crack after reaching the max skill level, well, he’s checked out of the program and likely lost some passion for the business objectives it was meant to promote. Nellie, on the other hand, may need a little more time to get the hang of the mission, so you’ve got her attention for a while longer. Until she levels up, that is.

But don’t get comfortable. Get writing the next release. What’s the lifespan of a release? As long or short as your users make it, but you should launch with enough fresh content to carry you for a rolling 12-months.

For more on content see Two parts gamification, one part content

Map the journey

Another approach to content planning and production is to look at the players’ journeys and their level of expertise with your gamified system. For new users, introduce a small set of features and add additional features as their skills expand and improve. (Remember Nellie?) In game parlance, think of your users as Rookies, Regulars and Masters and develop a roadmap of features to introduce over the next few releases to keep a steady level of engagement with the program.

There is an art to keeping users, or players, engaged with the narrative of a well-structured gamification program. You can leave some of that to the expertise of designers and developers, but be prepared to fatten up your content production to give them material to work with. It’s a long road to the promised land of employee engagement with gamification. Plan and budget smartly, and you’ll get there.

Everyday gamification, loyalty and rewards

It’s everywhere, everyday. Look around and you’ll find gamification where you least expect it.

Hello and welcome to your gamified life. I’m not talking about the games people play or playing your A-game, I’m talking about the game mechanics that drive the fulcrum of your day. Goals, rules, feedback, voluntary participation – free will with boundaries. That’s gamification and it powers your day from the get-go.

“When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.” ― Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

The bells, the bells!

It’s 6:40 AM and your alarm blasts a wake up. Now, alarm clocks have been around for well over 200 years (the very first American alarm clock was created by Levi Hutchins in 1787) and still have pride of place on night tables around the world. But how have they evolved to keep pace with changing times and human habits?

Before we talk about the plethora of 21st Century alarm clock apps, let’s look at the first big step up from the traditional brass bell and hammer alarm clock model, which was of course, the clock radio.

Although this is technically product diversification, and doesn’t qualify as gamification, it’s a precursor in the sense that combining the radio function with the clock adds an element of entertainment – the ability to tune to your favourite station — and therefore engagement. Consequently, people are more likely to choose a clock and radio hybrid over an old-fashioned clock.

The clock-radio still tells accurate time and the alarm still wakes you up, so all the functions of a clock remain unaltered. All that’s been added is an element of fun and engagement. And that’s the general purpose of gamification, to add a layer of entertainment or fun, without changing the nature of the underlying task or activity.

Of course, with the advent of mobile devices we find that technologies are converging. Think of how your radio, TV, phone and clock are now all rolled into one wonderfully portable device.

Consumers are a fickle lot and time waits for no one, as they say, so how do clock manufacturer’s keep their product fresh, interesting and more desirable than a competitors’?

Enter apps

Now, a true example of gamification applied to alarm clocks would be one of those nifty new apps that make you solve a math problem before the alarm will shut off. All the functions of a traditional clock are still there, but now there is an added layer of engagement (or torment). You can’t just hit snooze, roll over and go back to sleep, you have to actively engage with the phone.

Notice how adding gamification mechanics (challenge, mastery) solves a very specific problem – hitting the snooze button – by adding a layer of fun. In so far as doing maths first thing in the morning, can be called ‘fun’. The point is this; gamification adds value because it solves a problem, it’s not just there for the heck of it.

The gamified morning toilette

So, your morning is formally under way now. What’s next? How about brushing your teeth; has that been gamified yet? The answer is yes. Today, several electric toothbrush brands offer very zooty machines that not only clean your teeth, but record how long you’ve brushed, at what angle, and prompt you with a buzz to make sure you brush all four quadrants of teeth. Clever, but there’s more.

‘Smart’ electric toothbrushes supply a small LCD dongle (or app) that visualises the four quadrants of your mouth and allocates a star if you brush all four for the correct amount of time. The challenge (i.e. gamification mechanic) is to get a star every day. The rewards are two-fold. Intrinsic, in that you get satisfaction from a job well done, (which the dongle acknowledges with stars) and the additional extrinsic reward of sparkling clean teeth! Makes you want to brush the recommended twice a day. Gamification, loyalty, reward. Repeat.

Fit, fitter, fittest

If you have a remotely serious commitment to fitness, you’ve surely noticed dozens and dozens of apps on the market competing for the loyal patronage of runners, walkers and workout fanatics of all stripes. All are gamified – that is – they work on the principles of gamification. Some are bundled with fitness products.

Anyone who owns a Garmin product and who has experimented with the bundled Garmin Connect app can attest to its gamified dashboard. Strava, too, is an excellent and very popular gamified fitness app that is not dependant on specific technology or devices.

These apps work by playing into our very human tendency to compete and share, if you’re an extroverted type, or compete with yourself, if you’re more introverted. (Or if you don’t want others to know just how unfit you really are!) The apps assign points for activities; contain leader boards for comparison, and award badges and trophies for accomplishments, like most workouts per week, or longest distance run, or fastest 10 kilometres on a bicycle. It’s gamification exactly where you’d expect to find it.

Fill ‘er up and win

Ok, you’re wide awake and energised, ready to head out into the world. But first, you need to fill the car with petrol. Is there a gamified angle here? If you’re busy calculating how many loyalty points you’ll earn per litre, you betcha!

The simple logic is this — by allocating points for fuel purchases, you are more likely to continue filling up at that particular station, using that particular payment method. Your points can be redeemed against other purchases from other participating retailers. And so the cycle continues, driving customer retention. In South Africa, FNB’s eBucks loyalty program or the Discovery Insure driver challenge come to mind, but the concept of rewarding loyalty is universal and similar programs exist throughout the world to attract new customers, retain existing customers and get an edge in the marketplace.

So what’s the gamification element here? The tiered rewards structure typical of many reward programs is a big one. The more you engage, the more you move up the ranks of loyalty member VIPs, with the associated special perks and privileges. These might be extrinsic – like free gifts or increased points value, or intrinsic – like VIP airline check-in privileges. If it sounds like the gamification mechanic of levelling up, it is.

It’s everywhere

Are you starting to see how gamification is happening all around you? Great, because now it’s lunchtime and you and a colleague are headed to a coffee shop. But which one? Chances are you’ll make that choice based on which one has the best customer loyalty program. And they all have them.

Starbucks, for example has their own loyalty app, which tracks purchases and awards loyalty points that translate into discounts and other benefits. Every time you purchase a coffee you earn a gold star – collect enough gold stars on your virtual loyalty card and you get a free coffee or similar discount.

People love to collect things, and once they’ve started there is a strong, intrinsic motivation to complete the collection set. More often than not, a prize is ‘dangled’ for completing the set. Not just a virtual prize like a badge or trophy, but an actual tangible prize for loyal customers to have and to hold. These game elements, which drive customer engagement, are pure gamification at work.

Back to work

You’ve finished your coffee and redeemed a free muffin and now it’s time to head back to the office. However, it’s lunchtime and the traffic is hectic. Is there a gamified solution to deal with this particular pain-point?

Enter Waze. It’s not just an app that provides directions to a destination, oh no, gamification has made it much more engaging. Routes and directions are based on user feedback and the level of their interaction with the app. Just as you enjoy using social media to interact and feel part of a community, the app very cunningly makes use of your natural tendency to want to contribute to something larger than yourself – especially if there is a perceived benefit in doing so. In this case, you get to feel good about contributing to the reduction in traffic. Waze simply looks for alternative routes based on real-time feedback from app users.

And so it goes…

Challenge yourself to identify other day-to-day activities that have been gamified. Maybe you’ll hit the gym this evening and be incentivised and rewarded by a gamified loyalty program like Discovery Vitality, which touts itself as “the world’s leading science-based behavioural change programme that encourages healthy activity”.

Maybe the last thing you do before turning in will be to listen to an audiobook or your favourite podcast. You may even be one of those rare birds, someone who still reads books, albeit in electronic format and by means of an app. It’s a safe bet that however you choose to end your day, there will be a layer of gamification that enhances the experience, drives engagement, and rewards you for your actions.

Gamification really is everywhere, every day.

Permission to board. Winning at employee onboarding with gamification.

Employee onboarding doesn’t get the attention it deserves at most organisations.

In fact, it’s reported that just 32% of companies have a formalised onboarding process. Talk about a missed opportunity. Good talent is hard to come by, not to mention costly to recruit, so doesn’t it make sense to clinch the new hire deal with an engaging onboarding experience?

Time to get serious about onboarding

A recent online post by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) rates onboarding high on the list of 2019 New Year’s resolutions shared by HR professionals. As it should be, considering 54% of organisations with a formal onboarding process experience greater new hire productivity and 50% experience greater new hire retention. Those are solid reasons to get serious about formalising an onboarding program that’s specific to your company and your industry.

First impressions matter

Let’s face it – the whole onboarding process can be onerous and nerve-wracking from the very beginning. Here you have a new recruit, first day on the job, feeling a little nervous, excited and unsure of protocol in this new environment. The first place she lands is HR, confronted with a stack of paperwork for commitments ranging from non-disclosure agreements to health benefit declarations. There’s no time or mental space to read the fine print, so questions linger. Medical aid covers what? Compliance training is when? She’s not feeling confident. And that’s just the paperwork.

Then, it’s lunchtime. Is she greeted at the door by her new manager and taken to lunch with the team? Or is she pointed in the direction of the company lunchroom and left to her own devices? How you handle the process speaks volumes about your corporate culture, values and way of working; all potential deal-breakers if there’s a mismatch between candidate perception and daily reality. And yes, it does matter. SHRM reports that 69% of new employees are more likely to stay with the company after a great onboarding experience.

Get an onboarding edge with gamification

Gamification can make the onboarding process a whole lot easier and less stressful. Fun, even! How about pre-boarding? Send new recruits a link to your onboarding platform to complete the administrative details a week before the official start date. It’s a practical solution to the information overload of day one at a new company. Plus, it builds anticipation and gives a welcoming sense of connection with the company.

Gamification can take onboarding from an intimidating paperwork exercise to a compelling, personalised experience of your employee value proposition. Give your new employees a virtual experience of company culture, use collaborative challenges to open dialogue with other new hires, create a friendly channel of interaction with HR systems and processes. Gamification gives you lots of creative license to show the human side of your organisation. And from a management perspective, a gamification platform lets you collect all the new hire information you need with minimal effort and seamlessly integrate the data with your enterprise HR systems.

Engagement from day one

Gamification works on basic human drives, variously described by a number of motivational theorists, but defined by Psychologist David McClelland as basic needs for achievement, power and affiliation. Stimulate those motivations with game mechanics and you’ve got strong engagement with your message.

Create an electronic list of new hire forms and offer the visual satisfaction of ticking them off as completed. Add a few congratulatory messages of encouragement along the way and chatbots to answer questions.
Challenges and quests can become immersive experiences in company culture. Active discovery is a lot more fun, interesting and effective than passive learning from a video or even a live presentation.
Role playing offers an excellent opportunity to learn without fear of failure and to benefit from constructive feedback. Structured as a group activity, it fosters collaboration and a sense of identity with the company.
Design your program to require levelling up, that is, successfully completing specific tasks in a prescribed order before advancing to the next level of responsibility.
Recognise progress and reward achievements to make a clear connection between personal and organisational goals. Even token rewards, like a free coffee voucher, are fun, effective reinforcements.

Upgrade the experience

Stand out in the competition for top talent. Gamification can turn traditionally ho-hum HR functions like onboarding, training, and benefits management into engaging activities. Recruit and retain the best with a first-class employee experience.

Gamification show and tell

Where are you with gamification? Just getting going , researching your options, or still wondering how it works and what it can do for your business?

Wherever you are – keep going. The global gamification market, valued at USD 960.5m in 2014, is predicted to reach USD 22.9m by 2022. Apparently undeterred by early-adopter failures, more business leaders are seeing the possibilities and potential positive impacts of gamification.

How could gamification work in your business? Be inspired by these success stories.

Boost loyalty program membership

The hospitality chain Marriott International used gamification to encourage front desk staff to actively promote guest loyalty program membership. Using a private digital platform, staff in network hotels formed teams and competed against each other. Challenges were designed to drive specific goals and changed regularly to keep the game fresh. Real-time leaderboard results encouraged peer-to-peer recognition and the best teams were awarded prizes. The business result was meaningful, with over 400 hotels across four regions exceeding enrollment targets by 10%.

Build a brand community

The SAP Community Network (SCN) is an example of gamification at its best. As the official user community of multinational software giant SAP SE, members include users, developers, students, employees and partners, all sharing experiences with SAP products and growing a substantial knowledge base. Community members earn points for blogging, commenting, making wiki contributions and submitting whitepapers. Points are aggregated according to the area of participation and posted on a lifetime leaderboard for all to see. With 2 million unique visitors per month, that’s powerful peer recognition! The community has had its ups and downs since inception in 2003 as an exclusively developer network, but the story remains a sterling example of the motivational power of gamification.

Enhance productivity

Todoist is a productivity app that helps people track goals, projects and personal tasks. Complete a task – earn karma points. Miss a deadline – lose karma points. Which would you prefer? As users earn points they progress from ‘Beginner’ stage to ‘Enlightened’ stage, which in this case doesn’t exclude a good dose of hubris, as karma scores can be shared and compared on social media. Karma points are a great example of how a gamification mechanic should work; they’re personally meaningful and beautifully integrated into the creative narrative of the solution. And a pretty easy way to build good karma! With over 40 000 teams on the client roster, the world is about to become a better place.

Recruit and retain

Human Resources is a rich starting point for gamification. Deloitte, New Zealand created an interactive video, What would you do?, that gives recruits a view of the company’s corporate culture and explains their service lines. Viewers become the featured ‘new employee’ in the video, progressing through a day-in-the-life narrative requiring many of the decisions and choices encountered in real life at Deloitte. By the end of the video, the candidate’s ‘score’ gave HR deeper insights on the individual than the standard CV, psychometric tests and structured interviews. Gamification has given new life to HR.

More of the best

Gamification guru Yu Kai Chu kindly offers a comprehensive list of some of the most exciting and effective gamification solutions across a range of industries. Check it out and be inspired.

A new take on gamification

Gamification is evolving, as ever more research on motivation creates a broader reference for more purposeful, effective design. So, let’s call gamification for what it is: motivational design.

When ‘gamification’ hit the big league of business buzzwords around 2011, it was pitched as a cure-all for slack employee engagement, erratic compliance, sagging customer loyalty and every other performance ailment known to business. The hype was thick and furious, but mostly lacking in wholly satisfactory responses to basic questions: What is it? How does it work? Maybe the concept seemed too obviously simple to interrogate (it’s a game, right?) but for every early adopter success story there were exponentially more gamification failures.

So, game point to Brian Burke at Gartner for the now famous prediction: “…by 2014, eighty percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.”

Why design matters

Design, in its many forms, is concerned with ‘improving the human experience’ in our interactions with products, technology, living spaces, services and each other.

The human-centred design movement has raised the profile and expanded awareness of what has always been a basic tenant of good design; that is, making things work better for people. Good design is quiet, discreet and serves our needs unnoticed. Bad design draws attention to every obstacle between us and the task we need to perform.

Where so many gamification applications go wrong, as Burke pointed out several years ago, is focusing heavily on obvious game mechanics (like points, badges and leaderboards) while underestimating, or outright ignoring, “more subtle and more important game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy.” It’s the stuff of deeper human drives that support behaviour change build on tangible, long-term benefits for the organisation.

The essence of gamification

So, what is gamification? Here’s a few representative explanations.

Roman Rackwitz, CEO of German-based Engaging Lab, calls it straight up: “Please take into consideration that there is still an ongoing debate – around the world – concerning gamification’s definition.” True, but not particularly helpful to the uninitiated.

Brian Burke, Vice President, Chief of Research at Gartner, refreshed the company’s position on gamification in 2014, with the definition:“The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.” The reference to ‘digital’ is not a requirement, strictly speaking, but is the form most gamified applications take in a business environment.

Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball, author, currently with Google, cuts to the chase with this evocative analogy in his business best-seller, Loyalty 3.0: “If motivation and big data had a love child, its name would be gamification.” Gamification is essentially motivating people through data.

Yu-Kai Chou, speaker, author, President of the Octalysis Group and creator of the Octalysis Framework speaks to the gaming roots of gamification: “Gamification is the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities.”

The definition is familiar, but his explanation gives it new life: “Games have no other purpose than to please the human inside.” And whether the player’s objective is to slay the dragon or save the princess, “those are all excuses to simply keep the player happily entertained inside.” What a beautiful description of intrinsic motivation.

Motivational design (aka gamification)

The Playa perspective redefines gamification altogether by calling out the central components of what it is and what it does:

“Gamification is design that motivates people toward specific behaviour change. It’s motivational design.”

Playa’s take on gamification as motivational design reflects both a growing body of research on human motivation and a greater understanding that absent solid design, game mechanics are fun, but essentially meaningless conduits for changing behaviour. What’s the point? This repositioning creates a broader frame of reference for gamification, which makes for more purposeful and better performing, gamified design.

Let’s keep talking

As the global gamification dialogue continues, we can only move closer to a clear, consistent articulation of what gamification is and how it can be applied for the betterment of everyday, human experiences. And that’s important for helping organisations make sense of how gamification and motivational design can foster engagement, fuel intrinsic motivation and support business objectives. But only when it’s done right. So, let’s keep talking.

7 interesting questions and helpful answers about gamification

Gamification is not exactly a household word just yet, but awareness of the discipline is growing as more organisations get it right and experience the benefits of a human-focused solution to making business work better. Are you ready? Got questions? We’re here to help.

Gamification sounds like a pretty lightweight solution to serious business challenges. Why do I want my employees playing games at work?

OK, let’s take this from the top.

Gamification is not a game in the Candy Crush, idle amusement sense of the word. It’s game-like in form and function, but very much a serious business solution that works to engage people in the task at hand and motivate business-focused behaviours. And have fun doing it. Translated – gamification is a way to up your contact centre response times, drive sales numbers or prompt training and development.

At Playa, we define gamification as, “Design that motivates people toward specific behaviour change. It’s motivational design”.

Yes, good gamification borrows much from the best video game design practices (and that’s no lightweight benchmark for engagement and motivation) but also draws on behavioural science theories to tap the range of emotional needs that drive us all. It’s about creating fun human experiences that lead to better business.

1. How can I actually apply gamification in my business?

Any business activity that involves learning, that is, acquiring new skills, knowledge or behaviour, can be made more effective with gamification. Narrowly repetitive tasks are boring by design, they just are, and gamification can’t make them interesting. People become proficient at one task, end of story.

Gamification is about challenging people to become better at what they do and how they do it, through game-like experiences that promote and reward success. There are many ways to put gamification to work. Tap the competitive nature of sales and channel teams by gamifying activities like product training, cross-selling, meeting targets and cold calling.

Enrich your loyalty program with competitions, challenges and game elements that support deeper customer engagement.
Help your contact centre agents stay engaged and motivated to deliver consistently excellent service.
Boost the effectiveness of HR management. Gamify participation in your health and wellness platform and integrate game elements into your existing learning platform.

2. Can I get management information from a gamified system?

Data is the life blood of gamification – it’s the feedback loops that move players from one challenge to the next, it’s real-time leaderboard rankings, it’s the central element of the whole behaviour-reward ecosystem that is gamification. In fact, one definition of gamification is “motivating people through data”.

You can get all the information you need. Just take individual/team/department performance profiles from your gamification stats, pull in data from Human Resources or Learning and Development, or whatever business division you want and get a multi-dimensional view of performance. Consolidated. All on one dashboard. No hassle.

3. How do I know if I’m getting my gamification design right?

If you’re even thinking about design you’re already on the right track. Well done! Too many gamification efforts fizzle out for lack of a solid design foundation. Here are the basics for getting it right:

Define your business objective. Spell it out. What do you ultimately want to achieve, what specific behaviours will move you closer to the goal and how you will measure success?
Know your players. Are you designing for customers, channel partners or employees? Get a ‘whole-person’ perspective and deep understanding of your players.
Design an engaging journey. People will start at different skill levels, so make the player path challenging, unpredictable, fun and rich with personal choice.
Be creative with your reward strategy. Aim to strike a balance between monetary and non-monetary, intrinsic and extrinsic, timing and presentation. Experts’ advice can help.
Test, test and test again. Don’t even think about going live before you’ve nailed every detail and tested repeatedly.

4. I’ve heard points, badges and leaderboards referred to as gamification ‘mechanics’. What are mechanics?

Gamification mechanics are basically the design elements that form the central framework of an individual player’s experience. They put the ‘game’ in gamification. Artfully employed, mechanics generate a spark of motivation and peak the desire to move forward on the journey.

Fast feedback, for example is a mechanic that works on our intrinsic need for mastery and progress. You encounter an obstacle and choose a solution. A pop-up appears to tell you that you’ve got it right (great work, keep going) or wrong (back up, try again). Either way, the experience motivates your next move.

Points, badges and leaderboards are among the most widely used and abused mechanics in games and gamified applications. In the right design hands, they can be used to give meaning, context and personal relevance to gamified activities.

5. Does gamification work with all age-groups?

Gamification is motivational design, based in human-centred design principles and concerned with appealing to the uniquely human inner drives and emotions that influence our decisions and behaviour. There’s no age restriction on basic human motivation, so yes, good gamification design is effective across generations.

6. Can gamification boost creativity?

If that’s your business objective, gamification offers the tools to tap the collective creativity of your entire company to solve problems, develop new products or find new and better ways to operate. Gamification supports the creative process by providing a safe space for learning, experimenting, failing and persevering.

Gamification expert Gabe Zichermann has an interesting view on how gamification is changing the way we create. Watch his talk at TEDxVilnius on The Future of Creativity and Innovation.

7. Does gamification have any serious, real-life applications outside of business?

Oh, so glad you asked! People have been using gamification as a force for change and overall betterment of the world in really interesting ways. Check this short list from noted expert Yu-kai Chou. Be inspired!

The 10 best social products that use gamification to literally save the world …

Puzzle game FoldIt made breakthroughs in AIDS research that scientists couldn’t
RPG Diary mobi game titled Pain Squad helps children manage cancer pain and doctors manage treatment.
Zamzee helps kids get active and stay fit inspired by missions and challenges
Khan Academy makes creates love of learning through gamified online education
CrowdRise turns charitable giving into a gamified experience
SuperBetter helps people recover from setbacks and achieve their goals
OPower encourages responsible energy consumption
RecycleBank saves the environment by incentivising good environmental practices
m.Paani helps people get access to clean water with loyalty points
FreeRice feeds the hungry through an online quiz game

Hunger gamification

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Screaming toddlers don’t count, I’m talking about the essential you. What’s the intrinsic need, the raison d’etre, that moves you to get up, get out and give the day everything you’ve got?

Most people don’t know, or haven’t thought about it, which is why it’s a regular topic of pop psych self-improvement tests. And fair enough, the answer is an important bit of self-knowledge. To a hiring manager, it can reveal a lot about what a person values and the potential for organisational fit. To a gamification designer, it’s a design-critical piece of information to determine corresponding player types and the motivational drivers that guide effective solution design.

Good gamification design

As a quick review, or a longer read, if you’re so inclined, good gamification design is first and foremost human-focused and ticks 5 main boxes:

Be clear on the results you want to achieve
Create solid metrics with specific behaviours linking back to targeted results
Get a complete picture of the people you’re designing for
Understand how your people fit key ‘player types’, the emotional drivers at play and the circumstances that influence motivation.
Create and retain strong user/player engagement with your system

The mysteries of motivation

If motivation were an app we’d all be high achievers, but it’s one of those self-generated (or intrinsic) states that emerges from a deep well of individual need. It can’t be bought or coaxed into long-term service with extrinsic rewards.

Psychologist David McClelland, a pioneer of workplace motivation, contends that all human motivation is underpinned by three needs: Achievement, Power and Affiliation.

Individuals have a dominant trait, of course, but all three come into play according to stimulus and circumstance. Sounds like a job for gamification.

Need for achievement (N-Ach)

First proposed by Henry Murray and later popularised by McClelland, the Need for achievement (N-Ach) is characterised by a desire for significant accomplishment, mastery, or high standards.

People with dominant achievement needs bring the biggest overall benefit to the organisational party. Provided, of course, their need to achieve is activated, their behaviour is supported and their achievements recognised. Gamification does all of that.

Characteristics of achievement-motivated people

Achievement is more important (and satisfying) than material reward or recognition
Financial reward is seen as a ‘measurement of success’, not an end in itself
Reliable, factual feedback, is essential. Again, because it’s a solid measurement of success, rather than a generic accolade
Security and status are secondary to achievement
N-Ach types are constantly looking for better ways to make improvements to a way of working and do things better

Activating the Achiever with gamification

In gamification parlance, Achievers are the player equivalent of N-Ach type individuals.

“Achievers want to succeed. They need to be able to see themselves moving up the ranks and to seek out challenging solutions. Each level has to be more difficult than the next, allowing the Achiever to feel a sense of accomplishment once the level is complete. The challenge continues forever and there needs to be a greater good to what this user is achieving (a new skill unlocked).” Source: Know the player, know the game

Bear in mind that there’s an ebb and flow to all three main motivators. Under the right conditions, Achievement behaviours can be awakened in dominant Power or Affiliation types with artful use of gamification mechanics.

Active ingredients

Gamification mechanics are basic actions or mechanisms employed to move activity forward. There are 10 key mechanics that ping the specific intrinsic and extrinsic needs of each player type.

Fast feedback. Notices and messages support the intrinsic need for mastery and progress. Achievers thrive on it in pursuit of new learning and personal development.
Transparency. Statistics and scores are intrinsic motivators meeting the need for tracking progress and comparing to others through social interaction.
Goals. Pursuit of defined goals is intrinsically motivating. Missions, quests, challenges serve the needs for purpose, progress and social interaction.
Badges. A public symbol of accomplishment, successful conquest or high achievement, speaking to the needs for mastery, progress, purpose and social interaction.
Levelling up. The gamification equivalent of climbing the corporate ladder. Levelling up is a long-term effort and sign of status. It meets intrinsic needs for mastery, progress, purpose and social interaction.
Onboarding. Guiding learning within the of broader gamification design, onboarding moves new participants through a series of progressively harder exercises until skills are acquired. In other words, training without training. It supports the intrinsic need for mastery.
Competition. Not necessarily applicable to every gamification design, Leaderboards, are popular mechanics meeting intrinsic needs for mastery and social interaction
Collaboration. In the form of teams, collaborative effort meets intrinsic needs for purpose and social interaction and supports networking, culture and knowledge sharing.
Community. A critical success factor in long-term gamification systems, community supports the basic human need for sharing, comparing, and social interactions.
Points. An intrinsic motivator supporting progress and social interaction, points indicate progress, potential reward and evidence of accomplishment.Source: Rajat Paharia, Loyalty 3.0, p 73

Achievement, power, affiliation

Individual motivation is a private blend of universal human needs. Good gamification design combines the right active ingredients, in the right order, to create a dynamic, personally satisfying solution.

Caution. Feedback can be hazardous to your health.

In a long-overdue rehaul of industrial era performance management practices, a host of Fortune 500’s have ditched the annual employee performance review in favour of more frequent feedback.

While the dust settles on this major upset to the HR performance management applecart, some high-profile pundits, practitioners, and academics, the likes of Harvard and MIT have strong and sometimes divergent positions on the trend. One consistent point of agreement is the merit of frequent feedback. And kudos to General Electric, a stalwart of forced ranking and draconian HR policy, for leading the charge to 21^st Century management.

How am I doing?

It’s a simple question that requires a response. If you don’t know how you’re doing, there’s little motivation to continue, or stop, or reverse, or do whatever it takes to correct your performance in line with expectation. We’re biologically wired to read our environment for verbal and non-verbal cues that signal threat or safety, friend or foe and in the rough and ready world of business, written warning or employee of the month.

Feedback fast and slow

Fast feedback is one of the 10 most important gamification mechanics, and for good reason. BF Skinner, father of operant conditioning, showed that behaviour is most successfully changed when a desired action is immediately followed by reward. (Have you ever tried to clicker train your dog? It’s the same reinforcement principle at work.) Slow, inconsistent feedback, particularly at an initial learning stage, dilutes the power of the message, inhibits learning and generally kills motivation.

Positive, negative, informative

None of this is news to game developers, of course, so there is a third feedback option adopted in gamification design that that aims to deepen engagement; a simple pop-up to say, “Thanks. Great work. Now try this.” Suggesting a next step moves people down the ‘participation chain’ and on to the next phase of activity.

A double-edged sword

Feedback is a primal need and as such, an intrinsic motivator. But it works two ways. On the one hand, positive feedback satisfies our need for acceptance (Great work!) and on the other, negative feedback satisfies our need to learn and grow (Not quite, try again!). And here’s a thought from psychologist Kenneth Nowack, “…If feedback were an available and controlled prescription drug, it just might have long been pulled from the US market due to potential harmful side effects.” In other words, you need to strike a balance.

The tipping point

Several academic studies have found that there’s a point at which increased frequency in feedback leads to a decrease in task effort and performance.

The studies refer to feedback generally, but the results are equally applicable in a gamification context. And as for the timing, fast feedback can depress learning by giving the impression that the right answers are always available, so why bother learning them.

Handle with care

Feedback generates emotional and physical responses with potential consequences far beyond performance. Excessive negative feedback has been shown to increase blood pressure and elevate the fight or flight stress hormone cortisol to extreme levels.

Recent neuroimaging research suggests that emotional and physical pain share physiological pathways in our brains and can both cause depression and fatigue, among other conditions. And further on the emotional/physical connection in our brains, recalling past socially painfully events causes greater pain than recalling past physically painful events.

Want it, need it, have to have it — feedback is potent stuff. Good gamification design delivers the right feedback, at the right time and in just the measure for healthy engagement and effective learning.

Getting going with gamification

Where are you going with gamification? Do you need to energise contact centre performance? Maybe drive sales targets? Gamification can get you there. Get off to a good start with these quick tips.

Nail your strategy

Gamification design is about changing behaviour. So it follows that your first step in getting strategy right is to identify and understand the behaviours you’re looking for. And don’t confuse outcomes with behaviours.

You may want to get your sales team more active in using your CRM system. That’s the outcome you want but what does ‘more active’ look like? What specific actions do you want people to take? Maybe record cold calls, log accurate client contact information, post client/prospect industry news, share personal experiences? That’s the level of detail you need to establish performance goals, measures and rewards.

Know your people

Gamification can change behaviour, but you need to understand the people you’re designing for. One popular frame of reference for success is the Fogg Behaviour Model, which suggests there are three main factors underlying any human behaviour: motivation, ability, trigger. Dr Michael Wu has a good blog post on the subject.

So ask yourself: Are your people motivated to perform the behaviour you’re looking for? Do they have the skills, ability and access to everything required to do the job?

What’s the trigger that prompts action? Is there a trigger?

Watch out for unintended consequences

There’s a ‘win at any cost’ character in every crowd, so be sure your gamification system has some built-in stops and barriers to cheating. Set up daily maximums limits for points, social posts, tweets or whatever actions your system is designed to promote. It’s an unfortunate, but real consideration.

Set your timescale, choose your tools

What’s your gamification goal? Instant feedback with points and badges will drive a one-week promotional campaign, but rising through the ranks of a loyalty program is a much longer journey guided by a very different set of gamification tools. There are no shortcuts to rank and reputation. Just be aware that gamification is not a one-size-fits-all fix and different tools produce different results. Know your timescale, choose your tools and plan the experience wisely.

The Incentive Research Foundation offers this helpful illustration in Gamification Done Right – The Do’s and Don’t’s.

Know the effective timescale of your desired behaviour change

“Not all the behaviours you want to drive are intended to last forever. The effective timescale of any behavior change is how long the change in behaviour will last, or at least is intended to last.

Because there are many gamification tools with a wide range of feedback timescales, knowing the effective timescale you want to achieve really comes down to picking the right tool for the job.”

Build a community

If you’re looking at gamification to drive behaviour change over the long-term, you really need a strong community base. As we know from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, community touches our human desires for belonging and esteem. Good gamification design provides a mechanism for the status, access, power, display and peer comparison reflected in real-life community involvement. If it fits your gamification strategy, be assured that community is a powerful force for change.

Work your data

You just couldn’t ask for a better solution to consolidating data from all over the enterprise than a gamification platform. First, you get a full individual, team or department performance profile from your gamification stats. Pull in data from HR, Learning and Development, Sales and whatever other system you need to create a full living-colour of individual, team or department performance. All on one dashboard. Very neat.