Gamification has been around for a few years now and if you’ve never heard of it where have you been? It’s become a buzzword in many situations, including the world of business. It’s used for training purposes, project management, and relating to the help desk and also in the game designer’s sights is performance review.
Statistics back up the benefits of using gamification because they show that companies who use it, have more engaged employees who are 70% more likely to increase their skills beyond the mandatory minimums.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is adding game mechanics to nongame environments, like a website, online community, learning management system, or business intranet in order to increase participation. The goal of gamification is to engage with consumers, employees, and partners to inspire collaboration, sharing, and interacting.
In relation to performance management, it’s the process of adding game-like features such as challenges, levels, leaderboards, and badges.
What are the Benefits of Gamification in Relation to Performance Reviews?
A common complaint from employees about performance appraisals is that bosses do them all wrong. There are “no pats on the back” and “no recognition for doing the work of three people.” It’s a problem that’s common across the business world.
But how can turning the process into a videogame help improve employee performance and the actual performance appraisal?
Gamification fits very naturally into the employee feedback process. It makes it easier for bosses and peers to quickly give employees a digital pat on the back. When the pat on the back is visible across the company, using a badge or some other accolade, it makes it more effective than a private message.
If an employee is doing the work of three people, you can give them the recognition they need using badges. When it’s time for their annual review, you can access a complete record of all their achievements and tasks completed. You can even have an understanding of how well that employee worked with their peers by looking at the number of badges they’ve received.
How to Get Gamification Started in Your Business
Gamification may seem like an easy strategy to introduce to a business, but for it to be successful, you have to get the backing of the employees. The following steps will help you get started:
1. Use Measurable Goals
If you want your employees to learn about your products or services, give them awards for attending optional product webinars. That way your encouraging specific behaviors.
2. Focus on Things Employees Already Want to Do
If you want to ensure buy-in for any gamification of your performance appraisal process, a good place to start is rewarding employees for a behavior that’s already taking place. For example, are some sales people hitting 50 outbound calls in a day, while others aren’t quite getting there? Consider introducing a reward for those hitting 50 to see if it pushes others in the sales team to up their game.
3. Measure Change in Performance
Before you implement any kind of gamification, it’s important to determine a baseline so that you can measure the increase or decrease in performance.
4. Reward Incremental Progress
Don’t stress about the big accomplishments. Instead focus on the smaller steps and milestones that are necessary to reach those final goals. Try to reward employees for making incremental progress towards the overall goal to encourage progress.
5. Make Gamification Social
If you want to get the most out of gamification your best plan of attack is to make it Social. The whole idea of gamification is that it encourages employees to give each other public accolades. Therefore, promoting it through an open platform allows them to share their accomplishments and badges and give them bragging rights for their achievements. By publishing accomplishments, other employees will be driven to try harder to collaborate more effectively to get more badges.
Gamification Platforms That Might Help
- Gioco: This platform is free for up to 1,000 monthly requests. It’s a Brazilian-based gamification platform that includes a dashboard to create and track badges, points, and levels, in addition to detailed metrics and analytics.
- Captain Up: This is another gamification platform with a free version that includes 10 custom badges and eight levels, basic analytics, and activity and leaderboard functionality.
- OpenBadges by Mozilla: This is a platform from the folks behind the Firefox browser. It’s an open-source badge-issuing tool that allows anyone to issue or earn badges for anything.
- NGA Gamification Server: This is an open source gamification platform that was released by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for free. You can use it to give awards, points, and badges, and it has a customizable web interface for displaying badges.
- Zurmo: Zurmo is an open-source CRM but with a strong focus on gamification built in. Scores, badges, and a public leaderboard encourage user adoption, with statistics and the ability to redeem awards for designated gifts a unique feature.
Final Thoughts
Gamifying your performance reviews will help to increase your employees’ engagement and motivation. It will encourage your employees to work harder so that they unlock new badges and receive more accolades for their hard work.
Gamification allows you to change the employee review process by adding a fun-like element. At the same time, it lets you track actual performance and collect more information regarding your employees’ actual performance compared to a more standard or traditional performance review.