Corporate Gamification: Ideas, Examples, and Tips

Corporate training has connotations of being tedious and boring. Years of seminars, slide shows, and lectures have left this impression ingrained in our minds. But what if there was a better way to train within the corporate environment?

There is. Corporate gamification heralds a new era of corporate training, resulting in vastly improved results for both employee engagement and performance. Let’s take a closer look at what corporate gamification is, who should adopt it, a success story, and some best practices for incorporating corporate gamification.

What is corporate gamification?

Corporate gamification is simply the use of game elements applied to corporate training to create an effective, memorable, and even fun experience. Corporate gamification makes use of select gaming mechanics, such as earning points, leveling up, collecting coins, and creating competition to increase employee engagement and motivation.

Five types of corporates that should adopt gamification

Any corporation can – and arguably should – adopt gamification. There are many aspects that can be successfully gamified, resulting in better results across key metrics.

For example, the following areas have been shown to be significantly improved using gamification:

• Employee onboarding
• Company culture training
• Training around specific skills
• Employee learning and progression paths
• Sales
• Customer satisfaction

Given these areas, the following types of corporates should adopt gamification to see immediate results:

Distributed companies

It can be challenging to provide the same level of input to all employees across multiple offices. This has been made even more challenging by different work models, including hybrid and remote work, and varying work-from-home policies. Corporate gamification can bridge these gaps, providing a valuable and highly effective experience to employees, wherever they may be.

Retail stores and quick-service (fast food) restaurants

These are examples of establishments where teams in different locations can use corporate gamification to both collaborate and compete in a fun, productive environment.

Large enterprises

The sheer scale of a large enterprise means that standardization when it comes to corporate training can be difficult to achieve, as is personalization during this process. Corporate gamification solves both of these challenges, providing a high-level experience while enabling employees to embark on a personal and meaningful professional growth path.

Enterprise call centers and BPOs

Corporate gamification is a huge boost to both enterprise call centers and BPOs. Adding gamification to corporate training and processes is an effective and engaging way to measure performance and drive improvements.

Financial services companies

These companies can use corporate gamification to successfully drive sales, as well as training in evolving areas such as compliance, thus providing effective risk management.

How can corporate gamification improve employee performance?

Corporate gamification improves employee performance by ensuring that employees are more engaged. More engaged employees are likely to be higher performing employees, who will spend longer at companies and add more value over time.

Corporate gamification achieves this by creating a framework that is fun, exciting, social, rewarding, competitive, and non-threatening.

Five ideas for gamification of corporate learning

There are multiple ways that gamification can be incorporated into corporate training. 5 of these ideas include:

Scoring points

The concept of scoring points speaks to the human desire for achievement. By scoring points, we’re instantly rewarded, and encouraged to seek the next challenge.

Gamified quizzes

A quiz offered at the end of a corporate learning session that is meaningful and fun to will be completed. Additionally, quizzes have been proven to be highly effective for knowledge retention. Gamifying the experience will motivate employees to not only complete quizzes, but to raise their scores.

Gamified learning paths

Learning paths can steer an employee through a predetermined set of learnings, and by gamifying this experience, employees will be motivated to complete their paths, while taking on board the lessons learned.

Game narratives

Creating a game narrative, such as car races, hide-and-seek, and other themes as part of corporate gamification adds additional context and an element of engagement and fun to the learning experience.

Competition

When presented correctly, healthy competition is a powerful, positive motivator. It’s critical of course that the competition is in good spirits for all concerned, but if this is achieved, and once those competitive juices start flowing, tremendous results usually follow.

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Best practices for implementing gamification in a corporate workflow

Implementing gamification in the corporate workflow comes with a recommended set of best practices. Our top three recommendations include:

1. Make corporate gamification mainstream

Corporate gamification must have support from company leadership and be acknowledged as a central part of the corporate workflow. Practically, this means that gamification results shouldn’t be ignored – on the contrary, they should be celebrated, for example at all-hands or town hall meetings.

2. Anything can be gamified

There’s a good reason why the gaming industry is worth significantly more than the movie industry – gaming is interactive, fun, and keeps you coming back for more. Don’t stop at gamifying goals – companies should remember that any process or initiative can be gamified and deliver improved results.

3. Context is key

To successfully integrate corporate gamification, you must get user buy-in. Explain to employees why you have chosen to use gamification, which areas are gamified, and how to use the platform. Speak about the impact to KPIs and other critical metrics, and how gamification is being used to move the needle.

Examples of successful corporate gamification

There are many examples of successful gamification in corporate training, and one standout example is from SYKES.

SYKES creates intelligent CX for brands across the globe through digital marketing, sales expertise, customer service, and technical support (BPO) solutions. Sykes LATAM partnered with Centrical for its corporate gamification initiatives, with a specific focus on employee onboarding.

Before this, employee onboarding was thought to be tedious and boring, and consequently ineffective. However, once this process was gamified, that sentiment changed.

“When I enter the classrooms, the difference is immediately noticeable: you can actually see people are having fun. In fact, they suggest that we use the same approach with all learning activities since it’s so much better” notes Allan Morales, Regional Training Manager at SYKES LATAM.

The results were incredible: onboarding was reduced to 3 days from 5, and there was a 100% completion rate of learning activities. Overall satisfaction rose to 92%, and time to competency was shortened significantly.

Centrical solutions for corporate gamification

Centrical is the market leader when it comes to corporate gamification. The corporate gamification platform enables employees to own their performance, while providing goal clarity, instant feedback, recognition, sustainable learning, and continuous support.

From exciting game narratives to personal challenges, advanced microlearning, knowledge sharing, and more, Centrical has been chosen by the likes of Microsoft and Verizon Cellular Sales to lead gamification projects, and the results have been nothing short of phenomenal.

Final Thoughts

Corporate gamification has a huge role to play in significantly improving the corporate workflow. The results can be measured, and ROI can be demonstrated with hard numbers. A few takeaways from this analysis include:

• Corporate gamification is the application of game mechanics to corporate processes such as training and employee performance.
• Almost any part of the employee experience can and should be gamified, including onboarding, training, feedback, and recognition.
• A diverse and growing number of company types are leveraging corporate gamification.
• Best practices for corporate gamification include making it mainstream within the organization and communicating to employees on use.
• Organizations are seeing success from implementing corporate gamification.

Learn more about how Centrical can bring corporate gamification and strong results to your organization by setting up your personalized demo today!