10 Surprising Benefits Gained From Gamification

While gamification continues to gain popularity in the business world, there are still some who believe it to be a simple tool that leverages competitiveness to draw performance from and motivate employees. In reality, gamification doesn’t do that at all. It promotes and encourages behavior that companies value. What else can you gain from gamification? Here are 10 surprising benefits of gamification.

1. Creativity and Imagination

It’s easy to get lost in mundane work to a point where routine tasks cloud your vision, imagination and creativity. Your work becomes a “paper in, paper out” kind of gig that’s utterly boring and demotivating. Gamification has the ability to promote creativity and imagination by letting you explore new ways to get things done. With its problem solving and decision making tests, you’ll be creatively challenged at every level.

2. Overcome Frustrations and Enhance Patience

Challenges in the workplace can be frustrating and often test our patience. It’s normal and part of the package. However, with gamification you can walk through these challenges in a simulated environment, tested your abilities to overcome frustrations, think logically and patiently navigate your way towards a solution.

3. Workplace Environment and Culture

New recruits often get overwhelmed with what to expect in a new work environment. It’s tough settling in and finding your space in an already defined culture. Thanks to gamification the real work environment allows you to get a clearer understanding and familiarity of your new workplace environment, culture, expectations and how you fit in.

4. Rational and Calculated Decision Making

Gamification isn’t just a game that’s set in a made up world. It throws you into a real work situation where you’re faced with real work challenges and problems. Along your way you’ll be making rational and calculated decisions that’ll help you with your real job. It’ll test your ability to make decisions and showcase your problem solving skills.

5. Accept Defeat and Gain Learning

You can’t win at everything, and that’s pretty much true for work as well. While the wins you’ll enjoy and celebrate, the losses will be there as well. The defeats aren’t something to mope over. It’s something you learn from and adapt to. You gain strength from your losses and bounce back stronger and with much more resolve. That’s what gamification offers to you.

6. Social Skills

An essential part of gamification is not just your personal success. The gameplay incorporates elements of teamwork whereby you’re using your social skills to progress in the game. This of course tests your team player and collaborative skills and how well you move ahead in unity.

7. Customizable, flexibility and reduced cost

One of the biggest advantage that companies gain from gamification is the flexibility of the platform to be anything they want it to be. Its customizability makes it relevant to the specific company. All the while you’re able to save on resource time and costs.

8. Team Learning

The strength of any high performing team is the collective effort and alignment of their abilities, personalities, traits and skills. Knowing your team member’s abilities and skills is essential and through gamification you can gain much insight about each team player. You’ll learn how to adapt yourself around people’s personalities and traits and how best to utilize their abilities to ensure you come out winning.

9. Feedback

Performance reviews can often be delayed as they usually occur at the end of the year or mid-year. Thanks to gamification, feedback on your performance is instantaneous and real-time. This way you’ll learn faster and know always be aware if your performance is on track or not.

10. Motivated and Engaged

Being recognized in your workplace is important to you and gamification does that seamlessly. Your contributions never go unnoticed and you’re always aware of and engaged with the company’s objectives, goals and vision.

Have you experienced any surprising benefits that gamification has offered in your workplace? Do share your experiences in the comments below.

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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.