When we think of work we rarely picture people playing video games and competing to be the best among colleagues. Many larger companies have started bringing more play into everyday work. This “gamification” of the workplace has proven to have its pros and cons. It companies like LiveOps, Inc., a virtual call center, has implemented a game to where employees try to keep their calls to shorter amount of time. Since they have implemented this game, call time has been reduced by 15% and sales have improved by a percentage between 8% and 12%. Yet, the idea of gamification has also produced new problems. Some employees do not take the competition very friendly and get upset with other employees. Kris Duggan, chief executive of game-maker Badgeville, mentions another problem with gamification in the workplace, “Adding gamification to the workplace drives performance but it doesn’t make up for bad management. If you are a bad manager, gamification won’t help you.”
Just about everything including internal controls such as the gamification have their flaws. But, there are many benefits associated with the gamification in the workplace. The gamification has been introduced to the training aspect and has shown great results. Training employees while they play makes it fun to employees and they retain more information this way. Employees receive points and/or badges for achievements and win certain prizes at the end of a certain time period. Some of the programs helps employees rate themselves with other employees; this is thought to motivate a friendly competition among employees. If one employee sees that another has more points than he/she does than they will try harder to beat that other employee. As mention earlier, firms need to be careful that this competition does not get too out of hand, to where employees are becoming enemies with coworkers.
Gartner, a tech-industry research firm, estimated that by 2014 about 70% of large companies will have some kind of gamification program at their company. Technology is changing constantly so I believe that this change in the workforce is very important for employee satisfaction and turnover. If the employees are satisfied with their jobs then they will be willing to put more effort into doing things right the first time and they won’t want to look for a new job every six months. It is mentioned in the article that firms have been doing this for many years now but it has always been focused on the customer and not so much on the employee. Companies are realizing it is as important to have happy customers as it is important to have happy employees. Introducing a program that implies more games and fun into the workplace is a great beginning to reaching employee satisfaction and turnover rate.
The idea that if a company begins a gamification program at work cannot expect success if it is not managed correctly is crucial. For example, if the program consists of giving points for achievements, then it must be explain to employees how the system is going to work exactly and the firm must follow these rules. There cannot be favoritism among employees; this causes many problems including decrease in morale. But, overall the idea of including a gamification program seems like a great idea if it is managed correctly.
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