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A 2023 study by Gallup has found a concerning workplace trend: workers are no longer engaged with their jobs. According to the data, around 77% of workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged with their work, with only 23% reporting being actively engaged. Clearly, there’s a problem, but what can businesses do about it? Gamification strategies have proven a popular solution. Here’s everything you need to know about gamifying your workplace.
Key Takeaways:
Gamification strategies are a unique way to keep your workers engaged. As the name suggests, they add game-like elements to otherwise mundane office work, turning work into a fun challenge rather than a chore.
In most office settings, productivity is directly tied to employee morale. If your employees think that their job is just another 9-5 grind, they’re not going to feel valued or intellectually stimulated, and won’t reach their full potential. A gamified workplace can remedy this. The gamified elements give employees more direct feedback and reward their efforts, making their work seem less like a massive, insurmountable task and more like a long-term, challenging, but ultimately achievable goal to work towards.
Studies have shown that gamification strategies in the workplace can improve productivity and morale, but why? Generally, people need to be rewarded or recognized for their work to find meaning in it, and paychecks don’t always do that. Gamification strategies are designed to provide quick positive responses to hard work.
Let’s go a bit more into the science. Your brain releases chemicals called neurotransmitters in response to stimuli, and those chemicals determine your reactions, emotions, and more. When you complete a task, your brain gives you a quick hit of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which you’ve probably heard referred to as the happy chemical.
If you’re swamped with work or don’t get a tangible sense that your task has been completed, though, you may not get the dopamine hit that you’re supposed to. If this happens to your employees, they’ll start burning out and losing motivation. Gamification combats this by giving more tangible ways to recognize a job well done.
Let’s say, for example, that your employee has a large task made of ten smaller tasks. If you present it to them as-is, they won’t get the dopamine they need to stay motivated with each small task. Even if they’ve completed a small task, the big task isn’t complete, so they may not feel like they’ve accomplished anything.
Now, let’s take this example and gamify it. Your employee has a large task made of ten smaller tasks. Every time they complete a task, they gain experience points and level up. Now, instead of waiting until the large task is completed to feel accomplished, they’ll get a hit of dopamine with each small task as they watch their experience bar and level increase. This encourages them to work more efficiently and present a higher-quality product.
That being said, what are the top gamification strategies? Though every workplace has different needs, we’ve found that these strategies are some of our favorites.
Establish a goal that your entire office can work towards. For example, you could establish a system where completing different tasks awards a certain number of points. Each time someone earns points, they’re counted towards a shared point total among all office workers. When the office hits a set point milestone, everyone earns an award like a small bonus or a long weekend. This encourages collaboration and helps your employees hold each other accountable to complete their work, ensuring everyone contributes their fair share of points and productivity.
You could also take a more individualized approach by awarding employees with badges for completing personal goals. Some examples of badge-worthy achievements may include:
While this won’t encourage collaboration in the same way that a shared goal would, it does encourage your employees to improve upon their own performance and ensure that each workday is better than the last.
If you’ve ever worked against a tight deadline, you may have realized that such limits encourage you to work extremely efficiently in order to meet said deadline. The problem, though, is that the stress of constantly being up against deadlines will harm your employees’ morale and cause them to burn out.
If you want to harness the productivity of a tight deadline without the stress and higher stakes, consider surprising employees with a time-limited challenge or competition. (i.e., whoever makes the most sales by the end of the day wins.) Award the winner with something like a long weekend or a gift card to a popular restaurant. This creates a spirit of healthy competition that will drive your employees to greater heights.
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