Workplace gamification: Increase the happiness and productivity of the team

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

–Annie Dillard 

For organizations, ensuring that employees spend their days engaged, happy, and productive is critical to winning the war for talent, specifically when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. With a happy and productive workplace, results should naturally follow. So any levers that can be pulled to influence these factors are mission-critical to company success. 

As we’ll demonstrate, workplace gamification is one of the most important and effective ways to increase the happiness and productivity of your team and generate optimal results. 

What is gamification in the workplace?

Gamification in the workplace is the usage of game-derived techniques applied to the workplace context. For example, consider a racing game played on a gaming console. There is a competitive element, there is an aspect of beating one’s personal best score, there are points to collect, levels to conquer, badges to earn, and leaderboards to appear on.  

Now, apply these principles to the workplace. Examples of gamification in the workplace would include a new product launch, where everyone in the company can learn about the product and how to present it through a gamified experience. Microlearning courses could allow employees to earn points for videos watched on their mobile devices and attain badges for successfully completing quizzes. A leaderboard could keep track of the daily winners, and a monthly rewards program could be instituted with real-world rewards for those in podium positions. 

The options are endless, and the benefits are clear. Just like gaming is exciting, fun, and engaging, workplace gamification can ensure that these same qualities are present in the workplace environment.  

What are the benefits of gamification in the workplace for the business? 

There are tremendous benefits for businesses when it comes to gamification at work. Some of these include: 

Happier employees 

The workplace can be dry, boring, and routine. Or it can be fun, stimulating, and social. Workplace gamification adds an additional layer of engagement to the workplace experience, even if not all employees are in the same location. Workplace gamification leads to happier employees, and happier employees are more engaged and more productive. 

Increased motivation 

Motivating a team, or a whole company, can be challenging. Financial incentives help, but often there are limited resources to work with and those incentives sometimes only go so far. Workplace gamification can serve to jumpstart motivation, as employees now have additional context and a brand-new (and fun!) challenge.  

Upskilling your workforce 

Gamification has been successfully used to upskill employees, introduce new skills and competencies, and internally grow key employees. Whether these are core or general skills, upskilling has great benefits for employees, as well as for the organization as a whole. Examples could include training employees on social media usage, or in the latest technological tools available.  

Sharing knowledge 

How do you spread organizational knowledge across the workforce? How do you emphasize and reinforce company culture? Workplace gamification offers a powerful way to achieve these goals, such as employee contributions. 

Driving results 

Workplace gamification has been shown to dramatically improve key metrics, and significantly move the needle when it comes to achieving KPIs. For example, customers that have implemented Centrical for workplace gamification have seen a 12% increase in productivity and a 30% reduction in early attrition.  

How to implement the gamification process for your employees 

We’ve just covered the benefits of gamifying the workplace. The next question is how to actually implement the gamification process. Here are some helpful pointers: 

Add gamification to the training process 

A great place to start with workplace gamification is training employees and onboarding new hires. Instead of long, static seminars, you can excite, engage, and educate trainees with short, quickly-completed gamified microlearning modules. 

Rewards for the achievements 

As humans, we are motivated by extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Leverage this natural inclination by rewarding the right behaviors and celebrating progress. Keep track of successes via an interactive leaderboard, or use a gaming narrative like a car racing theme to make this even more exciting. Many organizations even offer real-life rewards to winners, including gift cards or credit for company swag. 

Drive specific teams 

Workplace gamification can be used to target and drive teams, such as sales or customer support. Instead of looking at “dry” metrics, a gamified system will completely flip the script and turn daily activities into something much more motivating. It could be an adventure narrative, where each outbound call adds coins to an employee’s treasure chest, or in-game rewards for high customer satisfaction scored.  

Gamify feedback 

Feedback is critical. As noted by Harvard Business Review research,  “Workplace surveys consistently show that employees crave better information about how they could improve their performance. But most say they don’t get it.” Feedback can form a huge part of a workplace gamification initiative, making it more constructive and less threatening.  

Impact of workplace gamification on employee productivity 

An excellent example of the results that can be achieved in terms of workplace gamification and feedback, is the case of Barona (formerly Ageris).  

The company noted that employees were serious about wanting feedback, generally as quickly as possible. They approached Centrical, where a plan was put together that included seeing goals and achievements in a graphical context, and a gamified narrative of missions, learnings, and challenges.  

They even pivoted from cash incentives to a rewards program based on points and badges, which could be redeemed for items in a virtual store. 

A further benefit was strengthening the relationship between employees and managers, increasing dialogue, and closing performance gaps.  

There were many fantastic outcomes of the project, but one that stands out is a 9% increase in KPI performance, which is truly phenomenal.  

To see a demo of how Centrical adds immediate value to any workplace context, click here. 

Centrical solution for applying gamification in the workplace 

What makes Centrical unique – and contributes to its position as the market leader – is its use of gamified, personalized, AI-powered microlearning delivered in the flow of work. 

With Centrical, organizations can increase effectiveness by creating, delivering, measuring, and adapting learning faster, and making this learning personalized at scale. 

They can drive value, by connecting learning to business outcomes and KPIs, and they can boost engagement across the organization.   

Through the use of advanced gamification, focused learning interactions, and AI, Centrical can continuously optimize your employees’ learning experience. Plus, the Centrical platform integrates with LMS systems and CRM or BI systems to measure real ROI.  

Check out a short preview of the Centrical platform in action. 

Final thoughts 

Workplace gamification lifts corporate learning out of the 1980’s and drives real results. We have just covered pointers for various ways to incorporate gamification in your workplace environment, from training and onboarding to feedback, and saw a real example of how gamified feedback led to an increase in productivity. A few key learnings:  

• Workplace gamification is the application of gaming elements applied to a workplace environment. 
• Gamifying the workplace brings numerous benefits, including happier employees, increased motivation, a more skilled workforce, easier knowledge sharing, and results in terms of key metrics. 
• Examples of workplace gamification can include onboarding new hires and general training, as well as specific targets, such as product training for sales teams and best practices for customer support. 

When it comes to workplace gamification, look no further than Centrical. For over a decade, Centrical has partnered with leading companies across the globe, such as Microsoft, Verizon, and many others, to drive your key results through workplace gamification. Request your personalized demo today to learn more.