Engage iPad appEmployee engagement, 70:20:10 and blended learning have been buzzwords in the corporate space for some time. However, many strategies continue to revolve around the needs of managers rather than employees and their motivations.

Failing to address employee needs and intrinsic desires can result in disengagement and stress, potentially costing organisations in excess of £1,500 per employee per year.

So I’d like to share with you some insight into the latest corporate buzzword and genuinely powerful technique: Gamification. As pioneers in gamification of learning and the workplace for many years, Cognify has gained some great knowledge in how to get gamification right.

To better understand what gamification truly is, let’s start by looking at its definition (source:Wikipedia.org):

Gamification primarily refers to a process of making systems, services and activities more enjoyable and motivating. Gamification commonly employs game design elements which are used in so-called non-game contexts in attempts to improve user engagement, organizational productivity…

Yet all too often we see examples of so-called gamification that are in the form of complete games for non-game activities. Creating games to make things more fun uses techniques that has been around for years in the guise of ‘game-based’, ‘applied games’ or ‘serious games’. These approaches are nothing new. In fact, by creating a game, the context of the activity becomes a game, removing it from the gamification definition.

Gamification is completely different. Gamification is a process of deconstructing games and their elements and applying them to activities and processes, not to simply make them fun but to accentuate the fun that already exists within them. This in turn makes them more motivating. When we understand true meaning of gamification, it takes on whole different purpose. It becomes less about games and more about human motivations. Gamification becomes ‘Human-Focussed Design’.

So, in a nutshell, here are some guiding principles for gamification success:

  1. Think less about games and more about the fun you can find within the activity or process that you’re trying to encourage people to do. Consider the motivations of your users. We use the four most common workplace motivators as the backdrop of our thinking – Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose and Relatedness.
  2. Fun is not an additive – adding fun game elements to tasks and activities will not make them fun. Consider how the task could be made fun or how to reframe the activity (we’ll talk more about this at WOLCE).
  3. Be prepared to test and tweak your approach! Fun cannot be calculated. You will need to test and tweak your approach to get the exact outputs you require. Calling in the experts will help shorten this process.

During our talk – Real Applications of Gamification in Learning – at the World of Learning Conference, we’ll be exploring the real meaning of gamification further, including some simple DOs and DON’Ts and what the future holds for this exceptionally powerful technique. So please, feel free to join us and find out more on Tuesday 29 Sept at 11:25 am.