Gamification in HR
Contextfor HRDs
Reading time: 3 minutes
HRDs are under pressure to perform their duties in a difficult economic environment, with:
- unprecedented competition,
- customers whose needs are constantly changing,
- of new technologies,
- an increased demand for digital talent,
- employees who have increasingly demanding expectations.
To meet these challenges, HR departments are looking to leverage gamification to attract the most sought-after talent - especially digital natives - and to motivate, upskill and retain them.
What is gamification?
In business, gamification is the application of game elements and mechanics (such as challenges, rankings, appealing visuals...) to business activities. While games are simply for fun, gamification uses psychology, game mechanics, and motivational techniques such as emulation, collaboration and meaningful rewards.
The objective of gamification is to encourage employees to follow the right processes, change their behaviors, collaborate more with their colleagues, keep in mind the challenges of their organization, and develop new skills.
The gamification market
The experts at Gartner estimate that the gamification market is currently growing at +32% per year and will reach $40 billion by 2024. This makes it clear that gamification is to be taken seriously and that it will radically change business processes, including HR processes.
Gartner's Vice President Brian Burke states that "employee-centric gamification applications are now outpacing customer-centric ones". (source: "Future Of Work: Using Gamification For Human Resources," Forbes)
Impact of gamification
On productivity and motivation
Research has shown that the impact of gamification is real:
- It boosts employee productivity 💥
89% of employees say they feel more effective with gamification
Source: "The 2019 Gamification at Work Survey," TalentLMS
- It increases employee motivation 🚀
72% of employees think gamification makes them more engaged
Source: "How Gamification in the Workplace Impacts Employee Productivity," Anadea
- Gartner experts conducted a study on the most effective gamification methods used in HR 🎲
63% of HR managers say they have seen positive results from implementing gamification.
Source: Future of HR Survey, 2019
When deployed appropriately, gamification can increase employee engagement, productivity and motivation through real-time feedback mechanisms, virtual rewards and opportunities to apply newly acquired knowledge.
Gamification can also help attract talent, embed corporate cultural values, and develop employee skills.
and yet...
Yet, only 24% of HR departments have adopted gamification in their organization. Why? Many of them imagine that gamification is just a superficial tool that adds "fun" to processes, ignoring its full potential to attract, engage, develop and retain all the talent that has an appetite for digital, especially the "millennials" that organizations so desperately need to adapt to a very dynamic economic environment.
Use cases
If not implemented properly, gamification can be infantilizing and counterproductive. Gartner's experts give us examples where gamification is used wisely and appropriately to generate spectacular results on business and talent:
- ROCHE attracted new talent by improving its employer brand through a coding game.
- DIRECTV has embraced the culture of failure in innovative projects through a gamified platform for sharing failed experiments.
- GENPACT used a virtual reality platform to allow its employees to develop their skills and actively participate in its educational program.
- RTI INTERNATIONAL used virtual badges to fully engage its employees in its projects.
Find out more about the use of gamification in the corporate world through testimonials from Objow customers (Manpower, Pepsico, Groupe Vyv...).
One last tip
HR managers have had doubts about the seriousness of gamification, its effectiveness over time, and its effect on employee motivation and engagement. The key is to implement gamification where it alone can generate motivation.
HR managers can draw inspiration from the various use cases to identify the HR processes in their organization that would benefit from gamification.
Fire Tiger is fully in line with this vision of the scope of gamification in the enterprise and offers its expertise through a tool specifically designed to manage performance and engage employees through gamification.
You'll also find the following articles: an introduction to gamification, integrating gamification in the workplace, engagement profiles and levers.
