3 ways to use gamification to transform your business operations

But what is it that businesses are expecting from gamification? Gamification, the application of game design and mechanics to nongame activities, is enticing businesses with its capacity to encourage skill development, to influence behaviors, and to enable innovation. Let’s take a look at how gamification can achieve positive outcomes in these areas for your business.

1. Learning and development for employees

Add the word “challenge” to any activity, and people, through our competitive and goal-seeking human nature, become intrigued. The use of game-like elements can transform a corporate training program from something employees have to do, to something they want to do. Today’s emerging workforce has grown up with video gaming, therefore making it a promising channel for promoting job training.

According to LinkedIn Learning, which surveyed learning and development professionals, 33% of them reported that gamification would significantly impact online learning in the next five years.

Bring gamification into your corporate training

Create a game layer to be played after the lesson material is presented by incorporating points systems, levels and badges to encourage competition. This approach tests the knowledge the employee has gained from the lesson.

Turn the lesson itself into a game that uses not only points, levels and badges but also simulation and animation in order to create a virtual environment where trainees can acquire and practice new skills. The U.S. Army, CIA, and FBI all utilize this approach with great success, as they create simulations designed for the new recruits in order to prepare them for actual scenarios they will face on the job.

2. Customer and employee behavior change

Games are appealing to people. By using a game as a way of interacting with a target audience, a business has a greater chance of influencing their behavior in ways that satisfy their business goals since people are drawn to and encouraged by games. Nike is a great example of how gamification can have a direct impact on revenue. Nike’s mobile apps have helped fuel sales growth even during the pandemic. For example, the Nike+ app, which lets users track personal running goals, saw Nike+ membership increase by 40% and a 30% increase in revenue.

Engage customers

Use gaming elements to get customers to interact with your products, whether online or in a store, using geolocation on their mobile device. Award them points, allow them to virtually customize your products and let them spend points towards getting new products. This can increase their loyalty and turn them into advocates for your brand.

Use gaming elements to change customer behaviors so they can bring down your costs. Health insurance companies have created games that inspire their customers to get healthy, thus, reducing medical bills the company has to cover. Users track their progress and record key health metrics like blood sugar levels and weight loss. Based on whether they reach their health goals, they can win rewards.

Your customer gamification strategy can help you not just ensure loyalty but help strengthen your brand and drive revenue through sales.

Engage employees

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in employees having to work from home. This has impacted how organizations can maintain communications with their employees, improve their morale and keep them engaged.

Motivate your employees to complete mundane tasks like filling out timesheets, expense reports and employee feedback forms by turning them into a game. Create employee profiles, choose avatars and reward desired behavior.

• Use gamified competition across your enterprise, as sales departments have long been doing
• Include results tracking, leaderboards and rewards as ways to stimulate productivity
• Use social networking elements to immerse your employees in the gamified experience, making it one of shared success and competition

3. Business innovation

Businesses are aware of how gamification can be an important part of their innovation strategy. They are increasingly using game mechanics to motivate and inspire their teams to participate in innovation.

Companies want to challenge employees to think outside the box in order to solve the problems in the game and promote critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. You can accomplish this by:

• Setting up an open-ended game that allows users to arrive at their own conclusions
• By not leading users through a scripted game path and end point, you allow users to explore new ideas and possibilities that can lead to many different innovative outcomes
• Having lots of players engaged in the game in order to allow more possible ideas and solutions to be uncovered for the business
• Ensuring the challenge is well-articulated and directly connected to your business’s goals and objectives

Overall, the motivations of the enterprise, the stakeholder and the teams involved must all be aligned in order for gamification to succeed in stimulating innovation. Whether it is intended to revitalize your corporate training program, engage with customers and employees, or encourage innovation, gamification can be applied across the enterprise to positively impact your business operations.