Canadian HR Reporter

anticipate. Deloitte, for example, used a gamified approach to help motivate its rising stars to make use of an online library full of videos and other resources on leadership. The company gamified the library with leaderboards, progress bars and badges, and saw use of the site increase dramatically. Information gold mine Gamification produces data that HR can potentially use, as well. For example, such information as what types of voluntary training an employee has engaged in or how effectively they've collaborated over the course of the year can be part of the overall package that informs training recommendations, performance reviews and so on. HR can also tap into top performers' data to help set the bar for others in the organization. "It's no secret that peer mentorship is a powerful motivator that drives employees to want to succeed," said Priyanka Singh, senior HR talent development/HR analytics at Global FIS. She notes that when peers see their colleagues earning praise and climbing the ladder, they want to know how they can achieve the same results. If, for example, a top member of the sales team takes new training courses regularly, keeps a log of new leads and always follows up on them and routinely hands in expense reports quickly – all of which has been recorded transparently through gamification – HR can take that data and use it as the basis for a 'mission.' "HR can create transparent, mission- based career paths that show the steps employees have taken to 'level up' in the organization," said Singh. "By showcasing this behaviour in a gamified platform, other employees can see what it takes to become the top salesperson," said Singh. "It's a breadcrumb path to the top." A word of caution Gamification isn't foolproof, however. Like anything, it can go wrong if it's not implemented with care. That was the case a few years ago with U.S. pharmaceutical company Omnicare. The company was attempting to address its long helpdesk wait times. To improve employee performance, the company added a leaderboard with the offer of cash incentives for workers who showed the most efficiency. The gamification, however, resulted in longer wait times and a spike in turnover. Employees felt watched by 'Big Brother' rather than motivated by the public gaming statistics. The company then tweaked the system to focus rewards on achievement rather than simply on the speed of the calls, with a much better outcome. This kind of misfire isn't isolated. A 2012 report by Gartner predicted 80 per cent of gamified enterprise applications would fail to meet their business objectives. "I think this happens when organizations don't do enough due diligence to understand specifically what their target audience needs," said Meister. "People can get enamoured with the idea of badges, points and levels, and neglect the strategy part. They really need to step up and consider what their needs and goals are, and what behaviours they're trying to change." "Most failures I've seen with gamification are with implementation," said Kapp. "For example, leaderboards: they're fantastic for the top 10 people on the leaderboard. For the 11th person, it's not quite as exciting. And for the 100th person, it's actually demotivating." Know your organizational culture, says Kapp, to understand how best to overcome that challenge. "It might be better to implement a group or team leaderboard; nobody wants to let the group down, so they'll be more likely to participate." It's important to tailor gamification to an organization's culture, as well. "I know of one company – a consultancy – where every second of the employees' time had to be billable," said Kapp. "They tried to implement a gamified approach, but if a manager walked by and saw an employee doing a gamified thing, that wouldn't fly." Knowing what makes particular groups of people tick is key. "For example, if you're working with a bunch of engineers, I would use more problem-based gamification," said Kapp. "So, 'Here's a problem, and let's see if you can find the solution.'" He said, "With this group, they wouldn't want anything too game-like or too silly." On the other hand, if you're in a retail environment and working mainly with 18 to 25-year olds, then a completely different approach – maybe one with characters and [a] story element – could work best. Minding the price tag While gamification's impact can be significant, if done well, the price doesn't have to be. "There are plug-ins for WordPress that people can use for badges and leaderboards," said Kapp. "And if you think of game elements like story and character, you can put those into the design of what you're doing relatively inexpensively." For example, suggests Kapp, a learning module might skip objectives at its start in favour of a story. "Instead of a didactic list of instructions, it becomes more an exploratory mystery to solve," said Kapp. "Organizations can do that relatively inexpensively." There's also been a shift in the past several years away from organizations seeking full gamification solutions toward simply baking gamification into many different platforms. "At our company, we've developed a new online course for HR practitioners about artificial intelligence [called Using AI 4 HR]," said Meister. "To ensure there were gamification elements in it, we didn't then go out and hire a gamification provider, on top of a platform provider. We asked the platform provider to add a gamification feature to what they were already doing." That kind of holistic thinking – layering gamified elements into all different sorts of initiatives, even the unexpected ones – is likely the future of gamification in the workplace. Big picture thinking, plus a healthy dose of strategizing, can impact how effective those future initiatives might be. "Determine what type of gamification you envision and what business outcomes you're trying to drive," said Kapp. "Nail down those two things and you'll be a lot closer to achieving your goal." In self-determination theory there are three elements that lead to motivation: Recent research has tied effective gamification to the main tenants of self-determination theory. — Karl Kapp, Director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg University and author of The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Autonomy Mastery and Relatedness Social aspect of it " "

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