The Hungrier Games: How Gamification Builds Drive and Determination in Employees

A Guest Blog by Taylor Burke*

Employee engagement is dismally low. Just 33 percent of U.S. employees report being engaged at work, and that number hasn’t changed much since Gallup began measuring for it in 2000.

Unrest of that level can only lead to one thing — revolt. And that’s exactly what’s occurring. More than a third of people now work for themselves and that number is expected to near 50 percent by 2020. Seventy-six percent of workers are actively looking for or open to new jobs.  

Business leaders, looking to place blame somewhere other than on themselves, might argue that low engagement equals low motivation — an entitled up-and-coming, addicted-to-smartphones, everyone-gets-a-trophy millennial generation. But they’d be wrong.

Eight Reasons Why You Should Earn a Gamification Certification

Why earn a Gamification Certificate?

Is there value in earning a Gamification Certificate? Is it worth the effort? We’ve asked some CEOs, L&D, and HR professionals to share their impressions of the value of a gamification certificate. Maybe what they had to say will give you the answers you need.

Gamification Simplified

Gamification is the use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts. Let me break that down.

Gamification Design for Training and Talent Development

How will you use gamification in your employee engagement and talent development programs in 2017?

Designing gamification for learning and talent development programs is FUN and fulfilling. No more dry, boring lectures or eLearning programs! I want to share a sampling of the designs done by just a few of the 100s of professionals who took our Level 1 Gamification Apprentice Certification in 2016.

Why Apply Gamification?

Let’s face it, gamifying a training takes a lot of extra work. It’s easy to deliver information in a lecture. Shouldn’t it be the participant’s responsibility to take our information, remember it, and apply it? After all, they are adults. Why is it our responsibility to make it fun and engaging for them?

Some Talent Development folks are satisfied throwing some points, badges, and leaderboards (PBLs) at a training and being done with it. They don’t have the time and resources to consider other mechanics, develop player personas, create narratives, and determine KPIs.

They ask why they should do all this extra work. Participants should be motivated enough by PBLs.

Gamification Challenge: Dollarize It! - ROI vs. ROE

It’s probably no surprise to you, but investing in employees pays off.

Learning opportunities result in higher levels of employee promotion, retention, satisfaction, skills and knowledge, and this translates to better organizational performance. In fact, research shows the more a company invests toward developing employees, the higher its stock value goes the following year.

Yet demonstrating a real, bottom-line, Return on Investment (ROI) remains a continued challenge for those of us in Learning and Development fields.

5 Things You Should Know About Gamification

As a business owner, leader, manager, HR or talent development professional, you can learn how to create fun and rewarding gamified experiences to achieve the business objectives that are crucial for the success and profitability of your organization. But you’ll have to begin with a willingness to think differently.

Here are 5 things to consider in gamification design.

Corporate Training: What's your Why?

Gamification of real-world training and development is a powerful technique which can motivate people and help generate loyalty to your organization, its products, and its message. At its core, Gamification is about finding the fun in the things that we have to do.

But like any of our training or learning programs, before we begin to design with gamification, we must first answer the question Why?

Gamification & Analytics – What’s Possible?

As gamification becomes more pervasive in learning programs across the globe, training professionals have an unique opportunity to generate powerful analytics that can shape future learning experiences.

Traditionally learners and their managers have focused on capturing who took the test, when they took it, and what the final score was on the program. While that is important, they are missing out on other important data that when used effectively encourages autonomy and mastery.

Throughout this interview listeners will be able to better understand how to set-up their training programs to enable them to measure “real” results and what tools & platforms are best to leverage in order to make them a success. In addition we will address Tin Can/X-API and how standards such as these can create personal learning experiences.

The Gamification of Learning Part 3: Rules, Rewards, and Results

This week on Gamification Talk Radio, we finish exploring the seven continents on our journey, and review Rules, Rewards, and Results.

Level 5:  Siberian Express – Why would they want to play?

As you create your gamification experience, think of creative features that will appeal to a variety of intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivators of your players. Define what core drivers of motivation will be most dominant in each phase of the experience. For example, in your onboarding phase you can get your players in quickly with some simple extrinsic motivators. The longer your players are in your game, you’ll want to design for different motivators such as: 

Gamification Design: We All Play Games

The reality is… you enjoy playing games. We’ve been playing games since the days of cavemen, and it is your nature to compare yourself to see how you measure up to others.

Games drive emotions, build loyalty, and create character.
What if you could take game mechanics like competition, collaboration, and chance -- and apply them to your organization to teach, persuade, and motivate people?

Is it possible to make dull training; or difficult, tedious, or challenging tasks just a little more fun?

The answer is YES!

Forward thinking organizations understand the power of Gamification to increase engagement, and are quickly learning how to leverage its power.

Gamification does NOT equal technology or playing video games. It is an important and powerful strategy for influencing and motivating people. Simply defined, Gamification uses game mechanics and rewards for non-game applications in order to solve a wide range of business problems.

An excerpt from an Introduction to Gamification class with facilitator Monica Cornetti, Sententia Founder and CEO.

Here are three factors to consider as YOU explore how Gamification can help you and your organization.

• Clearly Identify the Business Objectives – Instead of asking, “How can we leverage Gamification in our organization?” begin with clearly defined business objectives and an analysis of the suitability of Gamification to achieve those business objectives.
• Think of the Audience as Players not Puppets – Slapping some meaningless points, badges, and leaderboards into your event or marketing strategy does not mean that you’ll be able to get people to do what they’ve been unwilling to do before. Engage the target audience with meaningful incentives.
• Design for Player-Centricity –The sweet spot for Gamification is where the business objectives and player objectives overlap. Gamified applications must be designed to motivate players to achieve their goals.

At its core, Gamification is about finding the fun in the things that we have to do.

Making business processes compelling by making them fun. It's about the most fascinating and coolest thing that I can think of. 

More Gamification Articles:

• The 4 Questions to Ask Before Implementing Gamification
• Gamification Simplified

For information on earning a Gamification Certification for Learning, Talent Management and Organizational Development Professionals visit www.SententiaGames.com

About the Author:  Monica Cornetti
Founder and CEO, Sententia
www.SententiaGames.com
www.monicacornetti.com

A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You, writes The Gamification Report blog, and hosts the weekly Gamification Talk Radio program.

Columbus or Gilligan?

Judi, a friend of mine, told me about a training program she attended, Fundamentals of Finance and Accounting for Non-Financial Managers. Her goal was to learn to use financial documents to create ratios to guider her business decisions. I know, it was already a boring topic, but the presenter didn’t help things out. He was so ineffective that Judi gave up in frustration. She couldn’t learn from the subject matter expert.

She told me, “Monica, it was like trying to steer a ship without a map, and at this point, I don’t know if I’m Christopher Columbus or Gilligan!”

Judi had the desire to learn about financial statements. She needed the information the expert had to give. And she was motivated. And yet, the presenter could not give her directions she could use. Her three-hour-tour resulted in a shipwreck.

Millennials - the Largest Living Generation... Is Your Workplace Ready?

Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers in the United States as the largest living generation.

According to a recent analysis of U.S. Census data by the Pew Research Centerr, millennials - defined as those ages 18-34 in 2015 - now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51-69) for the top spot.  And the ranks of millennials are expected to swell nationally to roughly 81 million by 2036.

What does this mean for you?

7 Ways to Stay Motivated

Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Open Mic Part 2 - Motivation, Mastery, and Manipulation

Monica Cornetti and Dutch Driver

Part 2 of a casual open mic session where Dutch turns the tables on Monica and interviews her about gamification. In this session we discuss:

• The value of Gamification Hub – an online community of international gamification enthusiasts
• Progress as a part of Mastery
• SAPS – Status, Access, Power, Stuff
• Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation
• Creating habits vs. manipulation

It’s casual, it’s unedited, it’s FUN!

The 4 Mistakes Every First-Timer Makes with Gamification Design

As a gamification strategist and designer, I am excited that there is a lot of buzz around gamification in corporate learning and talent management. And at the same time I see a lot of confusion about what it really means to gamify a learning program. One thing I try to make clear is that gamification is NOT about designing a game, nor is it simply adding a way to earn points or handing out badges to your learners. It’s about finding the right motivators for your audience that promote the desired actions to achieve the desired outcomes.

So as you start your gamification strategy design, be sure to conduct a self-audit of the four common mistakes listed below – rather than just jumping in to a solution that may not be appropriate for you.

The Gamification Quest: A 7-Minute Design Challenge

This challenge was created for participants at the Training 2016 Conference and Expo sponsored by Training Magazine. It is designed to give a quick overview of the gamification strategy design process for Talent Development Programs. 

Are you up to the challenge?

    

The Gamification Quest: A 7- Minute Design Challenge from Monica Cornetti (LION)

About the Author:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the Founder and CEO of theSententia Gamification Consortium and the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica is hired for her skill as a gamification speaker and is considered at the top of her field in gamification design for corporate learning.

Connect with Monica on Twitter @monicacornetti or the company websitewww.monicacornetti.com or www.SententiaGames.com

Dutch Driver - Open Mic - Gamification and the 2020 Workforce

Part 1 of a casual open mic session where Dutch turns the tables on Monica and interviews her about gamification.

This week my guest is Dutch Driver – like most of my gamification colleagues – we met through social media – and then had an opportunity to meet live and in person when I was in Alabama speaking a few years back. Dutch is one of those creative, research type people that I find fascinating…

In this episode we discuss:

Gal Rimon - The Evolution of Gamification

With special guest Gal Rimon of www.gameffective.com

Enterprise gamification is evolving, influenced by changes to performance management methodologies, the concept of fitbit and the quantified self, a deeper understanding of employee motivation and the use of game narratives. On this episode of Gamification Talk Radio, Gal and Monica explore how gamification is:

Level Up Your Talent Development with Gamification [eBook]

Gamification can play a key role in how your organization trains employees when you learn how to think like a game designer.

The Game the System™ Model guides you and your team through the process of gamified learning design. By following the 5-step plan, you are essentially assured a successful outcome.

In this eBook we introduce you to each of the steps so that you can immediately begin to roll out the Game the System™ Model to level up training and development in your organization.