Gamification for Your Business

Let’s face it: workers are bored.

Top-performing companies depend on high employee engagement. But, this can be a problem when much of the workforce lacks the motivation and drive to succeed. 

Based on recent reports, 43% of employees are bored. Boredom has a notable impact on their productivity, retention, and morale.

Gamification in business can give workers an entirely different perspective.

Gamification adds excitement, decreases employee turnover, and encourages positive actions and behaviors in the office.

It uses game mechanics to revamp the old-school workload with creative game mechanics, such as competitive platforms, scores, points, and achievements.

Here, you can learn more about using gamification in business. Including its benefits and the various techniques you can add to your business.

What is gamification in business?

Gamification in business is adding game elements to a non-game setting.

Gamification intrigues mundane tasks by inspiring employees to be more productive, engaged, and invested in their work.

You can use gamification for business in different settings. This includes identifying qualified personnel, training recruits, boosting marketing campaigns, driving leads, rewarding high-ranking workers, and more.

Adding gameplay concepts to a regular working environment motivates employees to move up the ladder and seek to achieve business goals.

Why is gamification effective for business?

It’s psychology.

Based on behavioral science, gamification works by tapping into the mind’s natural need for acknowledgment, appreciation, status, reward, and achievement. 

People have a natural need to self-express. They will likely aim for more when you notice their actions and reward their work.

Gamification is not a temporary solution for improving performance and employee engagement. It is a long-term strategy that stimulates collaboration, maps the learning process, and encourages users to improve.

Game elements add simplicity.

By adding multiple tasks and achievements, gamification can relieve cognitive overload and relieve stress. Employees can use gamification to reduce their workload, visualize tasks, and plan accordingly.

Here is a quick look at the benefits of gamification in business.

Gamification increases sales

Gamification improves collaboration in the workplace.

Since successful gamification creates healthy competition, workers can join forces and strive for the common goal – sales. The different gamified components encourage employees to foster their sales initiative.

So, how can gamification be used in business to increase sales?

For example, gamification in digital marketing can stir employees’ sense of competitiveness and urge to win. When an employee unlocks achievements and gains a reward, they tend to share their wins with co-workers, family, and friends. The more they share their winnings with an online community, the bigger the interest in your brand.

Gamification increases customer data.

To achieve success, you can’t take the easy way out. You need unconventional methods for motivating and engaging consumers. That’s where customer gamification comes into play.

Gamification for businesses uses gamified mechanics like loyalty points to get clients to make more significant purchases regularly. You can use gamification software to build customer loyalty, satisfaction, and brand recognition.

To do that, you need rewards customers find helpful. Such as leaderboards or badges they can redeem for deals or more products.

Through gamification, you can also collect customer insight and data. You can offer surveys or quizzes that customers can interact with. The immediate feedback can give you a clear perspective into their behaviors, interests, likes, and dislikes. This is crucial when looking to boost social selling and company success.

Gamification increases engagement

Based on 2021 studies, gamified components improve employee engagement by satisfying relatedness, autonomy, and competence needs.

Gamification in business makes the user feel more in control.

Gamifying a website can amplify content discovery by 68%, social sharing by 22%, and comments by 13%. These are all detrimental factors in promoting user engagement.

The internal employees get to explore and decide how to proceed with the tasks. They interact with gamified programs to increase participation and drive engagement. At the same time, customers stay actively engaged in buying products or services.

Gamification increases productivity

Motivation drives productivity – and in the workplace, nothing is more important than productivity. To motivate people, you need to have a good system in place.

Gamification uses rewards to inspire employees and engage them to boost profit. About 90% of workers feel more productive when their workplace uses gamification.

Gamification in business amplifies work performance by changing outdated working mechanisms by stimulating dopamine release.

Here is a classic example: Finish the task -> get a reward for it (dopamine) -> be inspired to do it again.

So, how will gamification change business intelligence? Gamified features make monotonous tasks more interactive, enjoyable, challenging, and attainable. It basically turns everyday work into games; in a structured and well-thought-of way.

Through a highly interactive workplace, users can participate in friendly competition, obtain the desired achievements, and reinforce new strategies for better business results. With enhanced employee participation, the business can stay on the right track.

Gamification increases training

Gamification for business can be a valuable tool for training new employees.

Companies can use gamification through an interactive learning environment. This could include a chat-based interface, presentations where employees can click on various items to improve their practice, etc.

Organizations can also add a competitive element to gaming. Like leaderboards, for example. This can serve as a reminder that workers must give their best to remain on the team.

For engaging new hires and improving business results, a company can use virtual currencies as rewards. This can be a valuable method for online training environments.

To enhance the onboarding process, companies can also use badges or other subcategories of gamification. This can amplify the coaching process and promote social interaction. 

Gamification for business works when training employees because it offers a faster learning process, better behavior, and retention. Employees earn rewards, collect experience points, and enjoy different game mechanics even with remote work.

What is an example of gamification?

Gamification for your business can take on many forms. The goal is to create an engaging experience for customers who gain the most points and motivate employees to accomplish more challenging tasks. Here are a couple of examples you can use gamification based on the industry.

• Hospitality – Businesses across different service industry sectors can use gamification in the form of a loyalty program, points, and badges for members. Members can redeem these badges for future discounts, vouchers, and sales.
• Education – Workers in charge of training new employees can use game dynamics to turn complex educational challenges into more simplified and achievable milestones. Gamification can help create a personalized learning plan using videos, levels, and points to measure progress.
• E-commerce – Companies can use gamification to get people emotionally invested in “winning” their desired product.

What are gamification techniques?

Different gamification strategies exist.

One gamification strategy is goal setting. When you set clear goals through game-like mechanics, you stimulate people to pursue that goal. Even if the user fails, gamification inspires them to try again, thus promoting persistence.

Gamified systems offer better visualization of projects and feedback, which can also help with action planning and time management. You can use game mechanics to provide feedback and promote self-monitoring behavior.

Another way to implement gamification strategies is to compare progress. Employees can see how their co-workers are doing and whether or not they fall behind. Gamification makes day-to-day tasks more playful while it bolsters social connectivity among workers. 

What big companies use gamification?

Many companies use gamification to generate leads, increase engagement, reward people, and promote overall success. Some of them include the following:

• Starbucks – The Starbucks app is at the forefront of the digital ecosystem. The company’s My Rewards program rewards loyal clients with levels and other benefits, such as a birthday gift or an extra cup of coffee.
• Nike Fuel – Nike offers users a competitive program where people carry out physical challenges. They then see their progress via a point system that offers them virtual rewards. The app also lets people share the results on social media. This ends up boosting customer attention and business recognition.
• American Army – The army uses gamified elements as a recruitment strategy. Users can play military training games that can help boost their interest in joining the forces.

What should you not do in gamification?

Because of its simplicity, many businesses think that gamification is simple. But, like any other strategy, game mechanics require careful planning to fit seamlessly with your business initiative.

Take a look at a couple of mistakes to avoid with gamification:

• Not setting a clear objective – Your team needs a clear set of goals and objectives to accomplish. Think of it like this: what behaviors are you hoping to encourage through gamification? Focus on these behaviors and add elements that can benefit your company.
• Creating resentment among employees – If you let the competition become too fierce or you induce severe punishments, gamification won’t be that effective. It has to work as an encouragement tool, not establish control.
• Lacking visual mechanics – Gamification works when users can see the appeal. They need dashboards, leaderboards, and clearly visible reward systems for that.
• Overcomplicating tasks – Gamification is supposed to simplify the workload to make it more manageable. But, if you overcomplicate tasks, you are more likely to affect employees’ success rate.  
• Overcompensation – If you give workers too many points and too often, the entire system lacks value and is less likely to be effective. It has to have a precise difficulty level where achievements are within reach but not easily obtainable. Difficulty gives people incentives.

Gamify Your Business with Spinify

If you want to boost company performance and engage people, you should use gamification correctly. This system works best when it tracks data, works to engage people, and amplifies the working environment.

At Spinify, we can help you add game mechanics that work for your business. We are leaders in sales gamification. We can help tailor the gamification process to your needs. 

Book a demo with us today and see how we can help add gamification to your workplace. Check out our LinkedIn page to keep up to date!