Feedback Gamification: All You Need to Know

Effective feedback is highly valued by employees. A PwC survey showed that almost 60% of employees would appreciate more regular feedback. One effective way to achieve this is through feedback gamification. But before we get there, it’s important to emphasize the tremendous value of feedback for the employee experience, and the overall business. 

Feedback is what empowers employees to understand where they stand right now, where they can improve (and how) and what their growth path looks like. A Gallup report notes that “employees are hungry for feedback from their leaders, managers, and peers. They want to gain insights that advance their abilities and future potential.” Feedback is also critical from an organizational perspective. For one thing, effective feedback is directly linked to increased engagement. 

Further statistics state that: 

• 40% of employees who receive little or no feedback are likely to be disengaged at work 
• Companies with regular feedback loops have almost 15% lower turnover rates 
• Over two-thirds of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were recognized through feedback 
• 72% of millennials say they find their job more fulfilling if they receive accurate and consistent feedback 

How does one implement regular feedback effectively? Enter feedback gamification.  

What Is Feedback Gamification? 

Feedback gamification is the use of gaming components applied to the feedback process. Feedback gamification can be in the form of rewards, leaderboards, points collection, storytelling narratives, micro-surveys, and more.  

The goal of feedback gamification is to ensure that employees are receiving feedback in a way that is meaningful, consistent, and engaging. These elements have been shown to be critical in driving an effective feedback process within the organization. 

Role of Gamification in Feedback Gathering 

Gathering feedback has traditionally been fraught with challenges. Both employees and managers are busy, and filling out long forms or surveys is tedious – never mind finding time on the calendar for one-on-one feedback sessions.  

Gamification solves these problems by making feedback gathering a breeze. Here’s how: 

Collecting feedback in the right channels Instead of making employees and managers go to different platforms to gather feedback, you can bring the feedback-gathering process to employees via engaging approaches on their mobile phones, which is the way most people are used to interacting today. 

Keep it short and sharp By utilizing micro-surveys and regular check-ins, valuable data can be gathered using feedback gamification, in a fraction of the time it would traditionally take.  

Communicate from anywhere With a distributed workforce, there are additional challenges to collecting feedback. By using feedback gamification, feedback can be gathered at any time and place.  

Pulse checks Employee well-being matters. Send out pulse checks to get instant feedback and identify early signs of concern. 

 Benefits of Using Feedback Gamification 

There are many benefits of using feedback gamification that greatly elevate both the employee experience and business outcomes: 

• Managers can check in regularly on employee well-being and workloads 
• Organizations and teams can ensure that expectations are clear and progress is visible 
• Feedback gamification supports empathetic leadership 
• Leaders can identify early signs of burnout (including the very real issue of manager burnout) 
• Responses can be personalized for each employee and their unique needs 
• Companies can use feedback gamification to create a shared sense of purpose 
• Employees can be rewarded, praised, and recognized 
• Feedback gamification enables the use of just-in-time learning and AI-powered coaching 
• Keeping employees engaged and invested in their own progress helps fight turnover

How Does Gamification Encourage Employees to Share Feedback? 

Employees can be hesitant to share feedback directly. Feedback gamification enables employees to get and share feedback in a fun, non-threatening way. For example, a one-on-one meeting with a manager often leads to employees putting up their guard and being reluctant to share too much information. 

Contrast that with a feedback gamification example – let’s say a call center team is moving up the leaderboard based on key actions they take. But a team member is falling behind on the leaderboard. The employee’s manager can initiate a productive, constructive conversation with the employee, mentioning the slip, asking about any struggles the employee has, and from there, suggesting corrective actions and training. Feedback gamification turns these conversations into something productive and actionable while often building these relationships.  

How to Implement a Feedback Gamification Process in Your Organization? 

Implementing a feedback gamification process in your organization can be a lot easier than you think. Platforms like Centrical provide end-to-end, feature-rich feedback gamification solutions for businesses of all sizes, including the likes of Verizon Cellular Sales and Microsoft. 

The platform also provides tiered customer support and services based on project scope, together with a powerful customer success team, charged with providing additional value to customers – including regular product update communications and events, an in-app learning program for admins, a comprehensive Help Center, and in-app notifications and micro-tips. 

To see the Centrical platform in action, click here. 

Examples of Successful Feedback Gamification Programs 

An example of a highly successful feedback gamification program is Payoneer, the world’s go-to partner for digital commerce, used by major companies such as Fiverr, Walmart, Google, and others.  

With over 350 customer care associates dealing with financial regulations all over the world, continuous learning and feedback is super critical to the company.  

Centrical provided Payoneer with multiple solutions based on microlearning (brief bursts of learning in the flow of work), including feedback gamification.  

This meant that these associates received instant feedback and recognition for completing learning assignments, and for success on these assessments – resulting in a 90% success rate for completing daily learning.  

Centrical Solution for Feedback Gamification 

The Centrical platform offers the building blocks to create an effective feedback gamification process, including Voice of the Employee solutions, real-time performance management, and AI-powered, continuous coaching.  

With the Centrical platform’s feedback gamification solution, you can unlock tremendous benefits, including: 

• Empowering managers Guide managers with everything they need to coach efficiently and effectively, with consistent and actionable scheduled conversations, daily AI-driven insights, templates, integrated quality evaluation forms, targeted challenges, contextual learning, and virtual conversations. 
• Enabling just-in-time feedback Centrical helps give employee feedback at just the right moment, leveraging AI to trigger personal challenges, and assign new learning missions 
• Tracking improvements over time: Employees and their managers have a bird’s eye view of performance history and progress with advanced analytics and AI-powered insights  

Feedback Gamification: Final Thoughts and Takeaways  

Feedback gamification is one of the best ways to get all the benefits that effective feedback has to offer. To summarize some of the key learnings:

• Feedback is highly prized by employees, who generally feel that they don’t receive feedback often enough 
• Effective feedback is directly linked to engagement and attrition rates 
• Gathering feedback has been challenging in the past, as there was no easy and convenient way to collect such feedback – feedback gamification has now changed this  
• Feedback gamification offers benefits such as supporting empathetic leadership, and providing feedback at just the right moments  
• Implementing feedback gamification is much easier than many people think – with Centrical, you have everything you need to get started in one place 

Feedback gamification can transform the way your organization operates. Get in touch with Centrical to implement a game-changing feedback gamification solution.