Gamification to Boost Business – How It Works
Gamification is increasingly becoming an integral part of the operations of several companies. Many companies are turning to this concept to increase employee engagement, as well as a means of teaching, rewarding and retaining their staff.
The key principle of gamification is encouraging users to participate in desired behaviours. These users follow a path that is similar to a storyline in a game. Naturally, human beings have a psychological predisposition to engage in gaming activities, and gamification takes advantage of this tendency.
Interestingly, businesses are now using gamification to influence the behaviour of their customers. The objective of this approach is to increase consumer engagement with their brands. Several companies offer incentives and virtual rewards such as badges and points to customers for partaking in specific activities such as making purchases, signing up, referring friends, using products, and filling survey forms and so on.
How Gamification Can Improve a Business
The easiest way to improve a business is by having a productive workforce. A company that motivates its employees can quickly realize and even exceed its potential. The question is, how can gamification drive business performance?
The following are some of the ways that highlight the ability of gamification to improve the profitability of a business significantly.
Engagement
Employee engagement is crucial to the success of any business. Engaged employees can save a business money, and they are also more likely to satisfy the company’s clientele. On the contrary, disengaged employees can be detrimental to the development of a company.
Gamification enables companies that lack a philosophy of engagement to create one, and those that have an existing structure to improve on it. A gamified working environment allows employees to track their progress, know their strengths and shortcomings, and recommends actions that can assist staff in making further improvements.
Another characteristic of gamification is making benchmarks, goals and achievements visible to all employees. This way, it fosters commitment and motivates the workers, adding excitement and fun in what was previously a dull environment. The recognition and incentives that employees get from gamified systems drive them to perform better, which improves the overall performance of a business.
Learning and Onboarding
Gamification can radically change the way a business informs its employees about a new product by adding dynamism into staff training modules. Gamified platforms also add a new dimension to the onboarding of new employees. A typical gamified onboarding process will reward new employees with points and other game lets for interacting with learning material, solving challenges, completing tasks, and so forth.
A smart way of simplifying a gamified onboarding process is integrating levels. New recruits will obviously start at the beginner’s level, and as time goes by, they will go to advanced levels provided, they demonstrate a sufficient understanding of the company’s operations and regulations. As a result, employees get adequate time to adapt to their new work environment, which increases their performance output.
Adaptation to Change
Poorly performing companies often resort to overhauling their management teams with the hope of changing their fortunes. In most cases, these massive changes amount to nothing due to lack of engagement.
Companies must frequently adjust their operations to match the latest trends in technology and the prevailing market situation. If employees are unwilling to contribute to the change, it harms the chances of success significantly.
Gamifying the change process ensures that staff get instant feedback every time they wander from the right path. The system will promptly notify of the importance of the change, and it enables managers to track the compliance of the junior employees to the change. This, coupled with the increased engagement that comes with gamification, streamlines the process of adapting to changes.
Alignment with Business Objectives
Gamification encourages specific actions and then measures them. For instance, it can drive employees to make more calls, generate more leads, network with clients, and so on, to increase sales. Instead of emphasizing the outcome, gamification focuses on the process that leads up to it.
If appropriately implemented, gamification will inspire employees to improve their
performance. It is thus, a smart way of promoting desired behaviours that lead to the attainment of a business’s objectives.
Conclusion
Gamification is a powerful tool that can significantly improve the performances of a business. Even better, it is useful in motivating employees and can also be incorporated into a marketing campaign or products and services to influence customers.
The quality of execution has an enormous bearing on the success of gamification. A successful and sustainable gamification can turn customers into loyal fans, and convert a mundane workplace into an exciting environment. Gamification has endless potential.
That said, a gamified environment must strive to offer a worthwhile experience, if it doesn’t, nobody will use it. Similar to other strategies used to boost performance in business, the success of gamification must be measured.