Gamification, in a business environment, is a strategy to get your employees more involved and more engaged in their work. It is creating a game that encourages your employees to work harder and feel more positive in their work environment.
Especially, if you’re starting a big project. Gamification gives you the opportunity to reward and encourage your employees when they need to get a lot done in a short amount of time. It is a great way to start off projects with a boom and come out of the gate running.
So what do you need to create a gamification strategy at your workplace? Well, we put together a quick list of things that you’re going to need to start a fantastic gamification!
Track It
If you are running a gamification, what you want is to tap into your employee’s competitive sides. A little competition doesn’t hurt anyone and it can make people work harder.
But, if you’re utilizing it, you need to give people a way to track what progress they and everyone else are making. It can be as simple as a google spreadsheet that everyone can access.
As long as people can see where they are compared to everyone else, so that they are encouraged to work harder.
Prizes
There needs to be a reason that employees are competing for. However, there has to be a balance between a prize and something crazy.
If the prize is too large then people may take shortcuts and not do the work as well as they could. The trick is to push people to work hard, but still produce quality work.
A good trick is to make the prizes something to do with work. Like a shout out in the next meeting or a blog post on the website.
The prizes need to make people excited, so if you seem excited about it, your employees will be too.
Participation
The best way to encourage your employees to take part is to reward participation. At the end of the day, it isn’t really about who wins, it’s about getting a good amount of quality work.
So put small rewards for certain checkpoints or something like that. By making your employees feel appreciated, the good work will continue.
Everyone can benefit from this if you do it right because everyone can feel appreciated and do quality work at the same time.
In Practice
So, when can gamification really be used? Well say that your company is preparing for the holidays and has lots of orders coming in.
You can make a google spreadsheet with all the orders that need to be taken care of and have people sign-up for items and mark when they finish them. Make it a rule where they can only sign-up for a certain amount of projects at a time (say three).
But the important thing is that everyone can see everyone’s progress. This is the tracking portion. By seeing where they are in the standings, it encourages people to work harder.
Encourage people to participate by rewarding everyone at stages. Such as, giving them a shoutout in the company newsletter for every ten orders they finish, or give them a small snack. Something that makes people want to participate, as we said above.
When the orders are all filled, reward the person who did the most orders with a shout out in a meeting or giving them a blog post on the website. The better the prize, the more encouraged others will be to work hard the next time a gamification happens.
So that’s it! Gamification may sound strange at the beginning, but if it’s done right, it can be very encouraging and create a fun work environment. Especially during busy times like the holidays. Why not give it a try?
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