Gamification Ideas to Implement in the Workplace

You’ve probably heard ‘gamification’, but maybe you’re unsure what it is. Is it a cultural symptom of the short attention spans of millennials – must everything be a game now, with goodies and rewards, for people to take it seriously?

Calm down, Grandpa. Gamification sounds silly, but it might just be the secret ingredient to increase productivity in the workplace.

Gamification is the idea that people enjoy competition – they like seeing where and how they can ‘beat’ themselves and improve upon their old performance, in every way. Hence, by encouraging this instinct, you can improve employee productivity.

People who resent turning up for work every day are going to dawdle, and not carry out tasks as efficiently as those who feel invigorated by the work they do. The secret here is – that even if the work itself isn’t fun – make the workplace culture fun.

More invigorated staff = better profit margins.

Reward Staff Knowledge

“One thing we came up with was doing a quiz in the warehouse each morning to test our employee’s knowledge of stock, and health and safety. We were having a problem with thefts and accidents – and this stuff can easily be learned; everyone has a chance.

The employees who get the correct answers get to use a roulette machine to win cash. Since we’ve introduced this, there’s been both fewer accidents and less missing stock.”

– Manuel Gómez, State Manager

Level Up

“We had the training we were encouraging staff to take, but most were unwilling. It seems crucial for our business that everyone in the office knew the ins and outs of social media, so we made a better impact.

Once we changed the training program, made it look better, and added levels – rookie, pro, expert, master – way more people decided to engage & participate. We’re still measuring the returns, but we think it has made a huge difference to our margins.”

– Hannah Oblösk, E-Commerce facilitator

Make it Seem Like a Leisure

“You know it and I know it, these days everyone loves playing on their phones. I was sick of repeating myself to team members after meetings – people were asking me what they had to do again, they were drifting off, and they weren’t engaged.

We used https://meetappevent.com/ to add an app with interactive engagements during work meetings. People like it, we do polls and stuff, and it has graphics. Mostly it keeps people’s mind on the task, in a way they find entertaining.”

– Chan Wei Xi, Recruitment Executive

Increase Competition

“What’s the hardest beast to manage? An executive. Our know-it-all execs thought they were above our training program. But we knew it’d be good for the company – but they weren’t biting.

So, we introduced a scoreboard, and some stickers, and low and behold – the number of execs completing it went up by 50%, and the amount of time they completed it went down – while they spend more time working on it to be on the top of a scoreboard. Like giving a treat to a dog.”

– Olive Toss, Development Director

Encourage Collaboration In Gamification

‘We’ve got a lot of bright, keen employees who have a lot to say – but they weren’t putting this to best use on our social media channels. We wanted our employees to reply to chats create threads and write blog posts, but most weren’t engaged. Then we added a points scheme for social media engagement, with rewards like prizes, beer, and pizza – and social media engagement went through the roof.”

– Pirlo Attar, Social Media Executive

Get More Accurate Results With Gamification

“I noticed whole reams of our data were clearly inaccurate. Was this because of employee laziness? I don’t know. We encouraged a competition among data researchers to fill the missing gaps in the data. We incentivized it with a scoreboard and cards. Lo and behold – the gaps were filled in. We had more accurate data to base our reports on.”

– Jeremy Avraham, Data Researcher