The game's afoot for employee motivation, but lose the badges!
- Summary:
- Is gamification the key to an engaged workforce? Gaming guru An Coppens thinks so, but there are plenty of pitfalls to avoid if you are to win the game.
What's the one way not to motivate your workforce? According to An Coppens, chief game changer at Gamification Nation, one obvious way is:
Slapping a whole lot of ludicrous badges onto something and hoping that motivates people.
This superficial stab at applying gamification is one of a whole bevy of mistakes organisations in their bid to reap the promised benefits it can bring.
Research firm Gartner predicted a few years ago that a hefty 80% of gamification initiatives would fail due to poor design by 2014. Even so, Gartner estimated that 70% of Global 2000 organisations would have at least one gamified application by the end of the year.
There are growing examples of successful gamification initiatives, but the market is very much in its infancy, according to Coppens, with many executives still struggling to see how ‘playing’ has any role in a place of work.
Yet, far from being about play, which is unstructured, games are very structured with rules and rewards – much more in line with corporate objectives, observes Coppens.
In her new book, Gamification in Business, Coppens defines gamification as:
The application of game psychology, game mechanics and techniques to non-game situations to improve results and engagement.
In the same way that gamers are highly motivated to succeed and to move up to the next level, gamification aims to harness and channel individuals’ drive and determination in a corporate environment.
Interest is growing, partly encouraged by widening demographic of people who enjoy game playing. It’s no longer the preserve of socially inept teenage boys in their bedrooms.
Increasing numbers of women like gaming, and the growth of social games such as Angry Birds are doing much to popularise games further. Coppens points that about 70% of chief executives play games, even if that game is just Solitaire.
HR is one of the key areas where gamification has huge potential. Early adopters have tended to focus on recruitment and learning and development, but Coppens sees gamification having a massive effect is as a feedback mechanism. She says:
What people are craving, and particularly millennials, is a level of feedback. In most organisations this is once or twice a year, but what games do is give everyone instant feedback on how you’re doing. I think that’s a key lever to play with – it’s what millennials want and what baby boomers haven’t received.
Driving greater and more instantaneous feedback has the knock on effect of increasing engagement – people feel they are making a difference and that they are valued for their contribution.
But Coppens warns against tackling something like engagement that is company-wide and demands a major cultural shift. Better to stick with something ‘concrete’ like recruitment:
Engagement is a large change project strategically and you need buy in from a lot more people.
It can be a tricky concept to sell to the board, so Coppens advises starting proving the concept with a small project before broadening it out across the business. Those unsure where or how to start should first look at their employee base, points out Coppens:
The key with getting gamification right is looking at you audience: what do they like and do and are they willing to do more of this.
Your move
Even on a small project, it is vital that the usual strategic vision and rigor is applied. Any initiative needs to be considered holistically and analysed for how it will impact other parts of the business. It’s no good having an enticing and exciting game to encourage fresh talent to the organisation, if they then find the reality of the everyday job does not live up to expectations.
So, although a simple campaign can grow into a strategy, it’s better to start with a strategy first, particularly as a failed gamification project can be worse than doing nothing at all and actually increase levels of frustration.
The design needs to be carefully thought out and, if this is something intended to be continually used rather than a discrete project, it’s essential to update and augment the game regularly, otherwise people will quickly get bored.
That means that a project is never finished. Coppens says:
If you do something enough times you will get bored with it and so you need to add more games and techniques. It becomes an iterative project.
Alongside boredom, it can also be damaging to develop a game where people can cheat. There have been cases where sales people have worked out the metrics used to ratchet up the leaderboards and of course exploited that knowledge. Organizations have to continually change the metrics linked to the leaderboard to keep ahead of sharp sales people.
Leaderboards can be motivational for those vying for the top spot, but have the opposite effect for those languishing in the middle or backend of the pack. It would be better to only what’s relevant to the person in question – showing the people one or two ahead of an individual rather than the 20 above them.Coppens suggests you may actually need three different approaches to improve those at the bottom, middle and the high performers to keep them motivated.
Similarly, organizations need to tread carefully with badges. Used sparingly, badges can motivate, but hand them out like sweets and you risk devaluing them. While winning that first badge may boost someone’s confidence, by the second they’ll be cringing and by number three they’ll be asking questions about why the company is wasting its money.
Coppens cautions against linking performance in these games to financials. Instead, she believes it’s better to link them to organisational values – this should be a way of changing behaviour. “The key is to make your game so interesting that people are volunteering to play,” says Coppens.
Games are not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people may dip in and out of game playing, while others will not want to get involved at all. Not only should their wishes be respected, but their actions should not prejudice them, which is why it is important not to link games participation to pay or performance.
My take
Along Gartner’s hype cycle, gamification has passed through the stages of innovation, inflated expectation and is now sliding into that troublesome middle period the research firm calls the ‘trough of disillusionment’. Mistakes have been made (and will continue to be made), but they are useful for creating a clearer picture of where best and how to apply gamification. Your move next.