Scientists had struggled for decades to map the structure of a monkey enzyme that would help in finding the cure for AIDS.
In 2011, they decided to embrace a new way to increase participation in finding an answer—gamification. They hoped that utilizing gamification would increase the number of personnel working on the project, which would turbocharge the decoding process.
The results were beyond what they had ever hoped for: they found an answer within three weeks. Foldit, the global online folding protein game, awarded points and rankings to anyone who could decode the structure of the enzyme. Tellingly, participants included non-scientists.
The Foldit game embraced core principles of gamification, which calls for turning work functions into games. This tends to keep workers engaged and enhances motivation, which can increase productivity as employees will be having fun while working.
This article examines how embracing gamification in productivity tools is key to keeping your work-from-home (WFH) workers motivated.
Our Passion Towards Games – From Tetris To Slots
We love playing games. More than 215 million Americans play games regularly, with over 75% of those being adults. Whether it’s Tetris or slots, millions spend 7 hours each week playing their favorite games.
Several factors become an attraction for our desire to play: Sometimes it’s the logical nature of a game, sometimes it’s the ease of playing such as Slots games, which eventually became a preferable option by lots of novice gamblers due to the lack of complexity. Despite this, these games involve strategy setting and competition between peers, which makes them suitable for gamification for remote work.
Two very different games – Tetris and Slots, revolutionized the entertainment industry thanks to their simplicity. If Tetris could have become a hit with its own gaming device decades ago, Slots succeeded in shaping the present online gaming industry. In a nutshell, when people are offered the right game, they are always ready to jump into it.
Gaming Develops Excellence Habits
Seeing as only 32% of workers are engaged while 17% are actively disengaged, gamification could be the bridge between the two and incentivize workers to continually engage in positive behavior. This helps develop and retain excellence.
Gamification is an excellent tactic to get your remote workers to change their attitudes, which you can implement through non-financial rewards and recognition.
Instead of the old “push” strategy that forced workers to comply, gamification employs “pull” strategies. Pull strategies utilize encouragement, inspiration, and enablement, which makes working more enjoyable. With time, this cements positive habits, developing excellence.
Salesforce adopted the “Big Game Hunter” program when adopting a new CRM, with sales workers starting as “Chicken Hunters” and working their way up to “Whale Hunter” while using the CRM’s features. Compliance increased to over 40% for a particular customer.
Provides Data-Driven Insights
Employers often struggle with ways to track their online employees’ productivity. In 2022, Elon Musk infamously demanded Tesla workers report to their physical offices for at least 40 hours a week.
A gamification platform could alleviate this by providing data on employee participation. The platform collects employee performance data, shedding light on the number of hours they spent involved and work achievements.
Analyzing the data will reveal strengths and problem areas that managers can use to work out ways to improve or reinforce elements that increase the chances of achieving set goals.
Delloite embraced gamification in its leadership training program, increasing the number of users by 37% and reducing the time to certification by 50%.
Improves Productivity
Gamification facilitates greater enthusiasm toward work, motivating employees to work harder and earn greater rewards. It encourages teamwork, more participation, involvement, and recognition, all great catalysts for enhanced productivity.
And it’s easy to see why—80% of American workers believe gamification-based learning is more engaging and can increase productivity by up to 50%. 89% said they were more productive at work when their employer included elements of gamification.
Further, gamification presents tasks in a challenging manner. Tracking progress and completing tasks fills employees with feelings of accomplishment, encouraging them to attempt and complete even harder tasks.
Productivity tools embracing gamification tap into the needs of online workers to feel gratification and provide rewards instantly. They are perfect for giving feedback, engaging workers, minimizing turnover, and enhancing productivity.
Sets Clear Goals And Objectives
When setting up the gamification platform, you must have a set of clear objectives and goals that the remote team is to achieve. The game will have a target they hope to achieve to reach the pinnacle of success.
These goals and objectives help employees understand what they need to do to achieve those goals. Some employees often feel others are favored, so having fixed goals accompanied by accurate and verifiable tracking and declaring of results aid in transparency, making gamification the most suitable medium to achieve this.
The gamification platform can integrate overt company goals into the system as direct quests or subtly incorporate them as part of the achievements. Providing “spoils of war” such as badges or certificates works best at encouraging workers.
Omnicare embraced gamification to motivate new employees, with the highest performers displayed on leaderboards and receiving other assorted prizes. This attracted 100% employee participation and reduced customer wait time by 50%.
