Gamification helps to boost staff engagement, research shows

Gamification helps to boost staff engagement, research shows

Research has shown that the use of gamification in the workplace can help engage and motivate staff.  Gamification, which is the application of game playing in a non-game context, is becoming increasingly popular with businesses.

Engagement

Gamification became popular a few years ago, with market research company Gartner predicting that over 70 percent of Global 2000 companies would have introduced a gamified application by 2015.

However, Gartner also predicted that applications would fail to meet the expectations of businesses due to poor design. More sophisticated designs have now been released, and companies are starting to use gamification techniques again in order to boost engagement and encourage cultural change.

Commenting on the use of gamification, Dr Karl Kapp (author of The Gamification of Learning and Instruction) stated that it is now “out of the infant stage and towards the end of the toddler stage.”

Motivated

Explaining gamification, Gamificationplus Founder Pete Jenkins said that the term is progressively broadening to cover key categories such as game playing to achieve learning objectives, simulations to impart skills, the use of badges, points and leader boards to boost motivation, and using rewards in a non-game context to motivate behavior.

“There are often misunderstandings as to what it actually is and so people will ask for a game. But what gamification is really about is using game mechanics and game-design techniques in a non-game situation,” he said.

House of Fraser is amongst the many companies now using gamification, with the firm planning to introduce a gamified e-learning portal from UK-based firm Growth Engineering to provide benefits for staff.