Pros of Gamification

Gamification is a top strategy among sales teams and has shown positive results across the board. From recruitment to training, there are a lot of benefits of using this strategy. But before you start implementing this in your offices, you need to understand exactly how this helps you.

Knowing how to properly use gamification is the key to seeing a rise in sales. Here the main pros of gamification and how they can help you increase profits.

1.  Initial screening

When you’re choosing between candidates, gamification often serves as a great tool to test their soft skills. That can mean problem-solving through puzzles or teamwork skills through a virtual group setting. Creating a gamified environment to test personnel during the recruitment process also helps mitigate biases the interviewer may hold.

You can test other qualities: decision-making abilities, critical thinking, risk assessment skills, and strategic gameplay. The specific approach will depend on the requirements of the position and your team’s priorities. While you should never rely entirely on these as a metric for selection, they can help you choose among otherwise equally qualified candidates.

2.  Ice-breaking and communication

Getting past their initial hesitance is hard for many people and having an open flow of communication is extremely important in the workplace. Games provide an easy outlet for people to interact using their avatars. It doesn’t come with all the social implications they might otherwise face.

Gamification has shown exceedingly positive results in terms of helping new recruits settle into the office. However, you have to remember that the ultimate goal is to put people at ease. So you will, on occasion, have to adapt your approach. For employees with visual or hearing impairment, the IT department should ensure that voice recording software and transcription apps work well with the software.

3.  Training

The gamified approach provides an excellent interface to train new employees. By setting sales targets, assigning tasks, sharing tutorials, or other step-by-step methods, you can help recent hires adjust to your company climate. This is especially beneficial for entry-level employees who need a lot of reinforcement before picking up specific skills.

As a manager, it gives you enough freedom to oversee their progress without always interfering in their work. You can also analyze the daily results and use these metrics to provide personalized feedback through the app.

4.  Motivation tools

Gamification isn’t just for new hires either. More tenured employees can benefit from receiving regular encouragement. When you have a leaderboard that shows their individual sales, you can start contests, assign tasks, and push them to work to the best of their ability. When your top performers compete for the same rewards, you’ll see a drastic increase in your profit margins.

Similarly, your employees in the middle shouldn’t be left out either. You can use badges and other positive motivational tools to encourage a higher level of work. Studies show that employees only work harder when they have intrinsic motivation. Creating an environment of healthy competition is a crucial aspect of this approach.

5.  Insight and analysis

What gamification does for your company on a larger scale is provide a platform where each of your employees is putting in consistent data. Depending on what metrics you set, this can range from daily sales to the level of communication. And analyzing this data gives you huge insight into the workings of your organization on every level.

With a few clicks, you can tell who is meeting their targets and who is slacking off. You can also identify the people who work only enough to meet the assignment goals and the ones who go above and beyond. By comparing contests, you can identify what strategies motivate workers to improve their performance.

The real reason gamification is such a widely used tool is that it lets you identify your company model’s weaknesses on both a general and individual scale. But it doesn’t just stop there. Used right, it can help you figure out how to turn things around as well.

Conclusion

Overall, gamification has multiple benefits available to its adopters, but there are also cons that you need to keep in mind. Setting poor objectives or extremely high, unmeetable goals will accomplish the opposite of what you set out to do. It isn’t enough just to gamify. Equally important is how you go about it. And the process will need constant updates and upgrades.

You also want to make sure that the games are adding to your workers’ performance and helping them carry out their daily tasks. At no point should the gamification become a distraction or take away from their ability to work. Having a strong link between work and virtual tasks is critical. Once you figure out what that balance is and how you can use the approach to achieve the best possible outcomes, you’ll see a massive improvement in results.