Leveraging Gamification to make work more fun

Challenges faced by employees in today’s workplace

Workplace stress is becoming more common. According to Gallup, the average American spends 47% of his or her time at work, and for many people, it’s not an altogether pleasant experience. Stress, boredom, repetition, “busy work”, disillusionment and a poor work-life balance all contribute to the lack of Engagement at work.

Stress isn’t just a problem for workers — it can also affect companies’ bottom lines. According to a study from Harvard Business Review, “stress-related ailments cost U.S. businesses $300 billion annually in added health care costs and lost productivity.” In fact, employee burnout is now one of the most pressing issues facing businesses today.

Does the above lead to Adverse effects?

The Gamification of work is the use of game mechanics and design in non-game contexts. The goal is to engage users in a way that encourages them to take an active role, solve problems and be creative.

Gamification can be used in a variety of ways, from simple motivational tools like badges, leaderboards and points that reward employees for completing tasks and encourage them to improve performance, to more advanced tools like virtual currencies and social media integration that encourage collaboration between teams. Funifier can power more than 90 various type of motivational tools or as we call them Game Technics to help work place engagement drive the engagement strategy that one is seeking.

Nowadays, the word “engagement” has become synonymous with “employee loyalty.” This is not surprising since there are many reasons why employees should be loyal towards their employers. However, there are also some factors which can contribute towards reducing employee engagement levels within a company. These include:

Lack Of Clarity In The Organization’s Mission And Vision

How Gamification can make work better and more rewarding

Gamification can be used to enhance work in several ways. This can make tasks more engaging, provide variety, create a sense of competition, and give employees a sense of ownership of their work. Additionally, gamification can also help employees feel more connected to their work and colleagues.

When done correctly, gamification can lead to increased productivity, engagement, and job satisfaction. A Gartner study found that 70% of those who gamified their work saw an increase in them. There are many ways to gamify work, we will discuss some examples later. But first, let’s look at how gamification can be used to improve the specific challenges faced by employees the workplace we talked about more

• Boredom: gamification can be used to make them more attractive. This can be done by adding elements of by offering rewards for completing tasks and giving employees a sense of ownership of their work.

• Repetition: Gamification can provide a variety of tasks. This can be done by adding new challenge levels to tasks, offering different types of rewards for completing tasks, and introducing new game mechanics.

• Not engaging: gamification can make work more rewarding.

• Isolation: gamification can help employees become more connected to their work and colleagues. This can be done by adding social features tasks, providing rewards for completing tasks giving employees a sense of ownership of them.

• Disillusionment: gamification can help employees become more connected to their work and company.

What are some of the ways to make Gamification effective in the workplace?

There are many ways to make gamification more effective in the workplace. Powering your strategy with Funifier give you the multitude of options but let’s list some of them.

Taking out repetitive task or making a game out of them is the easiest one to start with by making the task more engaging and rewarding if and when it needs to be completed.

Adding some social feature in your organization such as integrating the strategy to Meta for Business or any other inhouse social engine used can add a level of fun by leveraging Like, Comments and Shares. This makes the tools more engaging and fun for employees but also give Meaning to the tasks at hand.

Giving a meaning and sense of purpose to tasks at hand not only makes the task more rewarding but also contribute to improving the quality of the work performed. There is a sense of Ownership which is key.

Giving employee a sense of Ownership is one way to help motivate employees and make them feel more connected to their work but also to the organization. Allowing them to chose when and how they can perform the tasks at hand, providing them autonomy over their work schedule and constant feedback loop on their progress and performance drive that key aspect of ownership and satisfaction within today’s workplace.

Can work be more fun?

It would be naive to assume that work cannot be made fun.

Gamification, or as we call it End User Engagement, can definitely be used to make today’s workplace more fun and engaging for all of your employees. Ask us how we did it for Caixa Bank’s 85000 employees.

By leveraging some of the game techniques available within Funifier such as points, quest list, instant feedback, virtual goods but also some that are unique to Funifier such as humanity hero, elitism, milestone unlock, collection, monitoring, exchangeable points, group quest, dangling, countdown timer, appointment dynamics, evolved UI, the big burn, refreshing content, FOMO punch, lottery give employees not only a sense of ownership of their work but also drives an increase of their Loyalty across the company, there for engagement and thus Fun.

---

Igor Radić,

Funifier Partner & CEO