How to Motivate Your Employees with Gamification? Motivation levers to fight disengagement at work. Disengagement at work is one of the main costs faced by businesses today. According to a study by Gallup in the United States nearly 70% of employees would not be engaged in their work, which would represent a cost to companies of $ 350 billion in the United States. Analyzing your employees’ motivation levers and knowing how to operate them is therefore crucial. The solution we propose today is gamification.
It is intrinsic motivation when the employee conducts his actions because of the interest he takes in them and the pleasure he feels in accomplishing them. It is to this type of motivation that we are interested.
There are 5 levers of intrinsic motivation.
- Autonomy: it is the need to feel master of one’s life, to decide what one is doing.
- The mastery: to be motivated it is crucial to have the feeling to progress, to improve.
- The purpose: to feel that his work makes a difference, that it changes things.
- Progression: whenever the employee feels that he is accomplishing something, even earning small things, he will feel a strong sense of motivation.
- The social bond: working with others and being recognized by them is motivating.
The Gamification will act on these five levers. Gamification is the application of certain rules that come from mainstream games to make the company’s processes more engaging and change behaviors durably. To have a more precise definition do not hesitate to consult our article: Gamification Definition: what is the gamification.
Use Gamification to set up these Motivational Levers
- Autonomy
Gamification is one of the levers of motivation that will play on autonomy. Indeed in the manner of a game, one can leave to the employee the freedom as to how it will fulfill its objectives with little control but to confront it regularly to challenges.
- Mastery
To stimulate the need for mastery we advise you to introduce a system of points. Each action must earn points that accumulate, in the manner of “miles” in the loyalty programs of the airlines. For example, an employee who shares an article on his or her LinkedIn will earn points. These points are not only redeemable for rewards, but also provide access to public ranks that allow the employee to know his or her level, compare it to others, and motivate him / her to reach the next level. The completion bar of the LinkedIn profile is, as such, emblematic of the gamified applications. Ideally we structure in three groups: beginner, confirmed, expert. One can imagine badges that attest these levels, but one must make sure that these badges have a value.
- Purpose
This is to show the impact that every individual effort has on the performance of the company, to value each member of the teams that perform well. It is like in a sport or a video game to give certainty to the user that his individual performance is important for collective performance.
With Incentive, the sales force’s communication platform, you can have highly personalized feedback and reward local teams. For example, during a commercial challenge, the best sellers will not be the only ones to benefit from an enhancement, all the fine performances are rewarded at their level by feedback from the management team. The user of the service can see his contribution to the sales of his agency / service.
- Progression
One of the key concepts of modern video games is the “success” of the badges that users gain by performing specific actions (beating x enemies, winning x races …). This concept can be applied to management: every success must be rewarded with immediate and public recognition. Progress systems that are well established and integrated into a global dynamic can be real motivators for your sales people.
- The Social Bond
Gamification effectively stimulates the need for sociability: gamification techniques encourage users to exchange. In concrete terms, with an agile communication tool for sales teams like Incentive you will have collaborative focus groups and for example there will be a weekly podium of top contributors who will reward the most active members and will be able to position themselves permanently in relation to others. Being in a group brings recognition and recognition.
In short, Gamification will help you give your employees the feeling that they are masters of their work, that they are progressing, accomplishing things that make a difference and that they bring recognition to their peers. All this in a playful and a constructive way. By setting up gamification mechanisms, your employees will be motivated and committed throughout the year.
How do Companies Gamification to motivate their Employees?
The phenomenon of gamification, combining work and play activity, attracts more and more companies, for example Microsoft which has just bought the publisher of games Incent Games.
An American researcher said in 2012 that he “preferred to hire a World of Warcraft
player rather than a Harvard economics student.” Why? His finding was that companies have a vested interest in learning how to play multiplayer strategy video games to learn, work as a team and create motivation.
This is called “Purification” or “Gamification”.
Today, this phenomenon is in full swing. Last example, at the beginning of last week, Microsoft bought the game Fantasy Sale steam, a game supposed to improve motivation and productivity. This game, inspired by sports games, allows employees to divide into teams to compete. Depending on the number of calls made or the sales made, points are awarded to them.
With this acquisition, Microsoft wants to improve its customer relationship management software Dynamics CRM to catch up on its competitors.
Gamification: a Still Young Market
The gamification of activities happens throughout the society. But this phenomenon is still new in companies. In 2012, Gartner estimated that 80% of gaming applications would not have met their targets in 2014. Today, it believes that the market has remained “flat” over the past two years but can accelerate.
The founder of Lab Gamification, Clement Muleteer, says “there are more and more applications”. He has also worked on Wiser, the energy management system developed by Schneider Electric, to make it “attractive and engaging” for the user.
Design, a company that develops “serious games” for major accounts, says “The CAC 40 companies began with the serious game to evolve their internal learning platforms, which were often boring. Our role is to add elements of gamification to reinforce the commitment, “confides Isabelle Artus, project manager.
However, this is not a miracle solution. “Gamification is a management element that must be part of the transformation of the company. If this transformation is not there, sprinkling gamification will not work, “says Guillaume Roques, vice president of development relations at Sales-force.
Incentive can help you tackle your teams by organizing business challenges. On the same subject, discover our article “Levers of Motivation: How to motivate your collaborators with the Gamification”
Hello everyone! This is Richard Daniels, a full-time passionate researcher & blogger. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics. He loves to write about economics, e-commerce, and business-related topics for students to assist them in their studies. That's the sole purpose of Business Study Notes.
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