February 13, 2013
Many workers don’t have much fun at work. According to Gallup, over 70 percent of employees are disengaged at work. This costs billions of pounds in lost productivity, poor performance, and poor service to their customers. But there is a solution that can combat this problem: gamification.
Gamification is the use of game mechanics to encourage and reward certain behaviours. Some simple common examples include earning points to drive customer loyalty (think of airlines and hotels) or progress statuses, which show customers where they are in the process, when they will be done, and the current return or amount owed. Increasingly, though, these gamification principles are being used by organisations to drive employee retention and desired behaviours internally.
My personal experience of gamification at Bluewolf has helped me to understand how it can be used to engage employees.
