Overcome remote employment issues: trust, communication and knowledge collaboration

We’ve just published an article in elearning industry: How Gamification Can Help Overcome Remote Employment issues

Here’s an excerpt:

“Gamification can solve remote employment issues, if used right. My favorite example is giving feedback, the immediate positive kind. Working remotely denies employees the opportunity to get it; this may lead to the feeling that they are working in a void. Feedback – as in “wow, you’ve managed to get so much done today” – contributes to the employee’s sense of well-being and drives them more. Many game elements can give this feedback – and also document it so a human will also be driven to give feedback too. For instance, think of Karma points, the classic reward for participating in knowledge sharing (think reddit). Collecting Karma points provides an immediate reward – but can also get noticed by a superior or peer and get a positive mention. Completion bars (think LinkedIn profile completion bar) can have the same effect.”

Regrading solving the communication challenges, we suggest, among other things:

“Set goals that can be easily measured through time logging (such as calls made to remote employees), use the current gamification platform to suggest calls to action that involve communication (for instance, each time a customer order is obtained, its existence and special requirements need to be delivered in a skype call to the remote worker), and completion mechanisms similar to those used by linkedin (“you have reached 80% of your personal communication goal for the month”).

Communication can also be gamified through pat on the back games, where employees choose “best communicators” and reward them in person, contributing to a good team environment and exemplifying the use of communications channels in accordance with goals. Communications goals can also be set on a team and departmental level.”

We also suggest thinking about how to reward over-communication (as in active participation in knowledge management scenarios).

We then discuss gamification as a great way to track and reward productivity and go on to discuss knowledge management and the corporate culture changes and modifications arising from gamification that targets resolving remote employment issues,  relevant for both telecommuting and scenarios where there are several remote offices.

You can read the full article here.

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