As a company, the last thing you want is miserable employees. So as important as it is to make your business fun for your customers, it is just as important to make it enjoyable for your employees! Gamification throughout the workplace is a great way to do that. From the onboarding process to friendly competition throughout the year, 87% of US workers report that workplace gamification would make them more productive.
Here are a few ways you can gamify the workplace:
1. Interactive Leaderboards
- Everyone loves a little friendly competition, so a couple of times a year, making a competition between different teams or employees could bring some excitement to the workday. This could be very motivating for positions such as Sales Reps or high performing employees. Having a leaderboard on the homepage is a great way to gamify this competition.
2. Goal Tracking Progress Bar
- It is important for your employees to know where they stand when it comes to meeting their goals. Having a visual to know your progress is a great motivating factor to have for your employees because they could feel like they aren’t making any progress but then they see the progress bar and then they can see how close they are to their goals.
3. Qualification-Based Travel Events
- Having a fully paid vacation on the table is an incentive that could get anyone to work hard. Even if employers have to bump up the qualification, it could push your employees to work even harder. High stake rewards are a very important part of gamification. You want to make sure that every department in your company has something to work towards!
Here are 4 strategies that will make this process smooth and enjoyable:
1. Take Your Time
- Don't rush into this process. It's important to get your employees excited about this addition but it can become more frustrating if the implementation is more difficult than exciting. Make sure that this is a program that isn’t just one-and done, but can grow as your employees improve engagement
2. Don't exaggerate rewards
- If the only thing encouraging your employees is the rewards then the motivation could die out quickly. It is key that the competition is just as motivating because in the long run you might not be able to keep providing the big time rewards (which is why it is important to take your time with this program) and it could encourage employees to cheat in order to win.
3. Make it fair
- It is important that all employees are aware of how the game works, what the main goal of this program is, and how to succeed. You can do this by sharing how the scoring system works with all users. Obviously, gamification in the workplace should be about a larger overarching goal (new leads, driving engagement, etc.) and making sure that the rules are there for all to see helps everyone whether they end up winning or not.
4. Celebrate all participates not just the top performer
- Everyone's a winner even if they fall behind a little on the leaderboard! A big part of this program should be based solely on participation. If a larger part of your participants are engaged in the program then that's a win in and of itself! Yes you should reward and recognize the top performer but don’t forget that everyone did their best and provided to the overall success of the business. If you focus solely on one person you could see a drop in engagement.
Work can still be fun and this is a great way to do that with a little bit of competition! It is something you can do for your employees that will end up helping your company as a whole. Why are the customers the only ones who get rewards? It’s time for the employees to get some too!
Check out our recognition and rewards platform which provides organizations of all sizes with simple, customizable solutions to engage and inspire employees to perform their best.
See our pricing or talk to one of our experts today.
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