Gamification: The “Candy Crush” way to Engage

A few months ago, on a Sunday morning, I was strolling near a park close to my house when I saw this group of excited teenagers celebrating the addition of the Pokemon magical creature in their kitty. That got me thinking…..at some point of time in our life, most of us (or atleast one family member) would have been (or currently are J ) addicted to the mobile phone games or glued to our Playstations. Online games indeed have become “the new normal”!

Given that we are at the dawn of rapid business innovation, engagement and productivity continue to remain the key cornerstones for enabling business. In my view, that’s where we can bring “gamification” comes into the fore. Just like the famous Candy Crush revolution, I find the premise of gaming mechanisms very attractive: motivate employees by tapping into their need for achievement and thrill by providing the diet of “reward based simulated games”. 

There are multiple views oscillating around the pros and cons of gamification. Some people question if it is another futurist fad to spend money…while some believe that it is the fast-track route to raising the bar on productivity or engagement with the Millenials and Gen Z who look forward to this “virtual coffee counter”.

I read these lines somewhere and they echo the philosophy of gamification at the workplace: “In each job that needs to be done, there must be an element of fun. As soon as you find the fun, snap! That job’s a game now!”. Some of the areas where companies are trying their shot and indulging in gaming methodologies are:

·        Hiring Talent 2.0: What would you prefer? Computer- games based hiring processes v/s traditional methods. The former one, despite lack of physical presence is interactive and exciting. It provides behavioural insights on the applicant’s thought-process and how he/ she may perform and react at work. From a sourcing agenda, gamification results help align the right candidate behavior with organizational values. From an employer branding perspective, it promotes brand ambassadorship even with the rejected lot as it is always better to tell the candidate that he/ she have not cleared a particular round rather than stating that he/ she has not cleared the interview.

·        Tracking Sales Achievement: What fun would it be to have a “technology based leader-board” highlighting “Rocket Singh: Salesman of the year”.  Many sales driven companies are leaning on the gamification methodology to drive the right behaviours for their field staff. Instead of vanilla performance ratings, this fair and transparent ranking methodology displays the winners by putting everybody on the same plane during the competition period. The associated rewards attached to reaching higher levels of the game fuels the disproportionate rise in productivity and target achievement. Given the high achievement orientation of the frontline staff, reaching higher levels in the simulation games acts like the classic non-monetary reward whose psychological benefit supercedes the emotional roller coaster of the annual variable payout cycle.

·        Learning and Development: The L&D landscape is changing from classroom-led programs to situation based e-learning. Gamified learning is making the educational content stick in the employee’s mind longer due to it’s first hand experiential involvement, competing format, immediate feedback and fun approach towards self-discovery as well as professional development.

·        Talent Assessment: Gamification is revolutionizing this segment. With assessment tests taking the innovative format of simulations and games, the choices selected during these games by the employees provides insights which can help HR and business leaders get a clearer picture of the employee’s intrinsic motivators and values and thus plan their growth-chart better.

While a few organizations have started resorting to gamification for driving business results by tapping the basic needs of recognizing and rewarding employees & creating a sense of competition; we are just scratching the surface of this new-age tool to integrate play into employees’ work day. It’s the right time to migrate from small pilots and make gamification “business-as-usual”. At the end of the day, the famous adage holds true even at our offices: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”… “and Jill a dull girl”!