3 Ways To Boost Employee Engagement With Gamification

Employees’ engagement is increasable using the following game mechanics: storylines, challenges, mystery, characters, progression, feedback, freedom to fail, and rewards, wrote Stephen Baer. Game elements turn tasks into enjoyable gameplay and are the tool to lead employee behavior and maintain their engagement. Read more: How Does Gamification Work in Business.

Gamification is 75% psychology and 25% technology,” Gabe Zichermann, “Gamification by Design” co-author

Purposefully managed gamified activities bring senses of belonging and meaning of work that directly comes to engagement. 87% of TalentLMS surveyed employees indicated the link between gamification and belonging and 82% surveyed agreed that game elements provide a greater sense of meaning in the workplace. 

Quantum Workplace has identified employee engagement drivers. Some of them are:

• Learning and development. Organization investment to make employees more successful to improve workers engagement.
• Belonging to organization and team. 
• Employees understand how they fit into the organization’s future plans.

Connecting gamification with certain organizational activities like feedback, team building and learning boost employees engagement.

1. Feedback motivates and lets them feel valued

Feedback is important to boost workers’ engagement. Research has tested and proven that rewards have a positive impact on employee engagement. Employees want to know how well they perform their tasks in gameplay and reality. 60% of surveyed workers would like to receive feedback very frequently – daily and weekly. Gamified activities are a great way to deliver feedback to employees.

Gamification platforms are automatised in real-time feedback by points, levels, status and rewards. Rewards can be turned into goods on online platforms and in real life. Feedback should be created in meaningful ways for organization’s employees.

2. Gamified activities improve interaction and sense of belonging 

Let’s bring colleagues and teams together by fun and gamified activities that improve relationships. Belonging feelings increase organizational commitment and engagement. According to Deloitte research colleagues who are aligned to the organization’s purpose, mission and values do create a sense of belonging almost as strong as colleagues who have a sense of community and feel connected to others in their organization.

By interaction employees get to know each other, their skills and that builds trust and collegial relationships. Gamification provides quicker team building through shared activities that are fun and engaging.

Ideas for game elements containing activities to improve belonging, relations and engagement in results:

• Gamified learning on organization’s values, culture and mission.
• Employees sharing photos of them in their work duties. 
• Solving quizzes, challenges, role plays and generating solutions to problems together. 

3. Learning and development increase self confidence

According to Quantum Workplace employees who have professional growth opportunities in their workplace are 2.5 times more likely to be highly engaged.

Learning based on gamification motivates employees to learn, develop, grow and create a learning culture. Organization should include different level challenges, quizzes, points and leaderboard as game mechanics to motivate learning and development. 

TalentLMS’ conducted survey shows that 83% of those who participated in gamified training feel motivated compared to 23% motivated at non gamified training.

Create a learning process more interesting for employees with microlearning that includes audio visual materials and regular training.

• Digitized simulations on actual topics, for example production / customer service. Included training and freedom to fail at the same time.
• Motivation to learn and achieve goals can be supplemented with a goal tracking bar/map. Employees will gain a sense of progress.

Engagement matters! According to Deloitte engaged teams are 87% less likely to leave the organization and revenue growth rate is 2.3 times greater than average.  Gamification mechanics have a great opportunity to improve employee engagement toward the work, team and organization.

Involve employees in gamified microlearning, team building and wellbeing promoting challenges with Efectio digital platform. Tasks, scores and rewards all in one exciting employee oriented place. Read more about effective employees engaging in Efectio e-book.