Gamification in business – the war on leadership and talent

Gamification – It’s here, its there its everywhere – are you taking part? Do you even know its a game?

What am I talking about? Gamification – turning potentially mundain tasks into game activities, where “points make prizes”

In the business world this has been happening for years under the guise of Management By Objectives (MBO) and bonuses. Set a target, when people reach it – reward them.

Social Media Gamification

Gamification has been the key driver behind the success of many, many social platforms and other activities. For example

• Twitter – followers
• Facebooks – friends & Likes
• ecademy – stats table
• EmpireAvenue – too many to mention, value, badges etc

Gamification – the heart of addiction & habit building

What we do know is that some personality types are, or can be prone to addictive type behaviour in the context of games. Just look at some of your facebook friends – how often do you get updates from them that they have achieved xx level or award, Then they move from one “game” to another, and the same things happen. Its a habit – a pattern of behaviour.

Gamification in business

At a low level, I have already shown how appraisals and bonus systems are games – just make sure that what is being measures really does count, as often it will be only these things that get done consistently.

As more and more organisations work towards developing collaboration and internal social business solutions, so gamification will become even more important.

or one of the hardest things any business can do is get people engaged in an online community – be it public or private.
Sure some with large egos – or those that are keen to share will be ther, but what about the other 90%?

Gamification and reward (see Pavlov’s work), is a great strategy to build engagement.

The challenge is making sure that the measures and rewards are quality as well as quantity based.

Understanding what gets measured

One site I know has 3 types of member, however the actions by each of those groups are measured differently. This causes one group to more readily support the other, thus building a division, its hidden to most, but it is there.

Points earned through any form of gamification need to be transparent, and any differences in activity should be stated.

The less transparent something is the more people will test and explore, and the net result is less productive output!

Here to stay?

As more and more activity is done online, gamification to encourage people to share, and to measure activity and pergformance.
This will be an area of increasing complexity, and dare I say it an area of growth for advisers and specialists.

How many HR people do you know that understand what gamification is all about? How many HR people realise that this is even on the horizon? For it is sneaking into the business arena from the games platforms, through social media and in through collaboration tools.

Will gamification replace CRM?

In the coming few years collaboration tools will either be fully integrated with CRM, or replace CRM as core tools in business, and with more and more businesses relying on “portfolio” workers, externals will need to be in the game on a level playing field if they are to be employable and usable

Are you using gamification in your business? with your employees or customers?