Employee events - outdoor activities,  group lunches, holiday parties, and corporate events are important to-dos on the HR executive’s list. Their purpose is to motivate employees, encourage peer interaction and improve satisfaction, loyalty, performance and retention. Yet, not all employees feel ecstatic or motivated by paintball, having to reveal their yeast allergy to colleagues over lunch, or consuming egg nog at the must have holiday party. Nevertheless, research shows that peer interaction positively affects employee engagement. In fact, according the Corporate Executive Board, peer interaction drives employee engagement by 36 percent. Employers are well aware of this - they wouldn’t hold social events to start with. The interesting question is how offsite parties fare when compared to daily on-the-job interaction? CEB research shows that peer interaction that happens at work is more effective than peer interaction during extracurricular activities. Hence, while meeting for a barbecue at your team leader’s home is nice, interacting with peers at work on a daily basis has a more pronounced effect on boosting engagement and productivity - the "inner work life" that makes employees happy at work (see this link in the Harvard Business Review). On the job interaction can be driven by gamification. Many people think that gamification is only a way of driving the individual, however it is a very effective tool for driving positive peer interaction and engagement during work hours - through the promotion of positive team interaction. Following are 4 examples of how enterprise gamification can do this Gamify peer interaction in eLearning and awareness creation - Take a sales team as an example. If a new product is launched, everyone should know everything about its features, advantages, and differentiation. Why not use elearning gamification - with team-based challenges? Team based competitions shift the focus of elearning and internal product communication to employee interaction and even more importantly, on the job interaction. Find engagement leaders - use the employee engagement funnel - An employee engagement funnel is a figurative funnel  through which new, or unengaged, employees pass to become more engaged with the company’s goals and strategic drives. The latter stages of the funnel are based on peer interactions where employees become leaders or ambassadors who share their knowledge and skills with colleagues - making them aware of new offerings and interacting with them. Gamifying activities that consist of leadership in training and teaching others - on the job, both encourages this behavior and rewards it. And it is 100% on the job. Good deeds gamification - The problem with using competition-based leaderboards and badges to drive engagement and productivity is that not everyone thrives on competition and therefore, these activities may be counterproductive. In fact, they ignore and alienate the real growth and attempts made by the non-top-performers who are nevertheless performing extremely well. One way to overcome this is to use social gamification to encourage good deeds (helping with on-boarding, sharing materials, engaging with social networks and knowledge management systems). At the heart of this model is earning Karma points. One can use good old fashioned games to do this such as card collection — think kids collecting baseball cards — where employees collect cards for each person they interact with in a certain timeframe and then "fill" an album. Another great way is to use "pat on the back" games, where people are recognized for positive peer interactions. Gamification as a means of peer communication and recognition -Since enterprise gamification that uses the right calls to action and communication can influence employee behavior, it is an effective way to nurture peer interaction, drive motivation, and then reward it. This is the secret to achieving a win-win situation — even after the holiday party egg nog episode is all but a distant memory.

Sales managers often swear by the efficacy of using leaderboards. They will tell you how charting sales people on a leaderboard — be it manually or with enterprise gamification, sends numbers through the roof. However, can leaderboards really have such an impact  on sales performance? Granted sales people thrive on competition, however the problem is that leaderboards tend to be misused  with disastrous consequences. The good news is that once you’re aware of these epic fails, the damage is reversible and you’ll be less likely to repeat the same mistakes. So, how do you know if your sales leaderboards are doomed? Simply ask yourself if you’re doing these five  major mistakes:   Are you tracking the wrong benchmarks? You’re about to implement a simple sales leaderboard and figure that the KPIs you should be tracking are … well, sales. In other words, the leaderboard design you chose displays dollar or unit sales per person on the team. Think again. There are two reasons this is a bad idea: Firstly, gamification for sales teams should focus on encouraging certain behaviors — making calls, qualifying leads, meeting potential and existing clients etc. The aim is to generate more sales, however tracking actual sales does not motivate behavior. It also doesn’t reveal mistakes that your team might be making, therefore, the chance to correct them and change behaviors flies out the window. Secondly, leaderboards can be plain unfair and biased. If your leaderboard displays actual sales, they’re automatically favoring your experienced employees, because those less experienced usually land up with the smaller and less lucrative accounts. They’ll see the injustice and your much touted leaderboards will just fuel their frustration — at best. Are you endorsing the wrong behaviors? Leaderboards are essentially part of a game with rules, just like other gamification mechanics. Game rules are always open to deliberate misinterpretation by players who like to win. The unintended consequences are not pretty. Take for example leaderboards that track the percentage of sales forecasts met as the main KPI. Those who’ve achieved the forecast numbers in their sales deals should win. However, this  could engender the temptation to cheat — in other words, sales reps may keep sales forecasts low or perhaps  underestimate or "doctor" sales opportunities. Why would they do this? To get the first place on the leaderboard every time - without breaking a sweat. Another potentially noxious outcome from leaderboards is that a rep that was meant to close more deals or help others do so, could easily get carried away in just winning the competition, rather than being motivated by it. Are you overlooking the middle 60%? In an article titled "The Dirty Secret of Effective Sales Coaching,"  the Harvard Business Review states that sales and service organizations are investing increasing amounts of time and effort in improving managers’ coaching of reps. However, this coaching is basically useless when managers target the wrong reps, which according to the article, they do all the time. Why? Because, sales managers often favor the "tails — the very best and the very worst reps on their team." They engage with lower performers, because they have goals to meet and they favor their top reps, because it’s more exciting. According to the Review’s research, coaching only "laggards and leaders," and ignoring the intermediate 60 percent, has no impact on an organization’s bottom line results, since top performers don’t actually improve and bottom performers might simply not be suitable for the job — no matter how world-class the coaching may be. The crux of the matter is that the very 60% of sales reps being ignored demonstrated the highest performance gains when coached. Leaderboards present the same problem if misused. "Leaders" are just more driven by the intense competition of the leaderboards, which achieves nothing other than reiterating that they are leaders. The "laggards" just become increasingly aggravated and frustrated, so their situation doesn’t improve. However, what about those in the middle? Bottom line, to improve sales results, invest in helping the middle 60% improve and also share the fuzzy feeling of being highlighted by the leaderboard. Are you boring them to death? If you leaderboard excludes new recruits or the less competitive among us, it is discriminating. They won’t just miss out on the thrills being rewarded to others, but they’ll feel down right  dejected. Since the leaderboard shows the top brass in the team, sometimes others even drop off the  list — as if they’re not even worth a mention. Not good and not right! The negative outcome here is boredom and disengagement. Don’t fret, the situation is redeemable — just use more suitable game mechanics that involve more than badges, points and… you guessed it, leaderboards. Do you want a winning team or a few stars? The very term a "sales team" implies a group of individuals, be they sales development managers or account managers, who are meant to combine forces or work across product departments. Leaderboards, however focus on the individual. So, if its team spirit and cooperation you’re after, leaderboards can have the opposite effect. Rapid sales scenarios  require individualized competition, but if that’s not the case, leaderboards that compare teams and not just stars, help middle players shine through and with their team members. To leaderboard or not to leaderboard? If you answered "yes" to even some of the above, you’re probably wondering whether to ditch the whole leaderboard concept altogether with points and badges to boot.  Not so fast we say. Leaderboards can be an extremely effective tool to recognize achievement and encourage behavior. Just make sure that they are applied correctly with serious thought to the desired outcomes and behaviors (compare rookies with rookies and small account managers with small account managers), as well as to their structure (opt for teams competing against goals and benchmarks as opposed to going head-to-head with each other). Also, make sure there is no temptation to trick the system. Last, but not least, engage people in a game at which that they can win at least some of the time, especially if they’re in the middle 60%!

According to Docebo, the eLearning market size will reach a $ 51.5 billion market size by 2015, with a growth rate of 7.6%. We collected some of our favorite eLearning game examples. While not all of these examples involve gamification, they are worthwhile considering. Game-based learning isn’t necessarily eLearning gamification, since learning through a game (an age-old method that is effective since repetition elements and feedback workout our working memory) isn’t what gamification is about. Gamification is using game mechanics (such as completion bars, counters, badges, leaderboards and many other forms of recognition and feedback) to promote actions. Gamification is known to encourage eLearning, but that doesn’t necessarily mean learning through a game. In any case, here are some great examples of eLearning: McDonalds McDonald’s used a game-based eLearning system to launch a new till system to 1,300 restaurants. It implemented a training game by City & Guilds Kineo that afforded employees an opportunity to learn in a safe environment, to practice, and to learn from mistakes without facing frustrated customers. The game was all things that good gamified eLearning should be: addictive, purposeful and fun. But more than that, by using a simulation of their new till system, the game was pertinent, engaging, it targeted skill and knowledge, and created a memorable learning experience. So much so, that while it wasn’t mandatory, it had 145,000 visits in the first year and is still the company’s most popular employee portal page ever. Thanks to improved accuracy and a 7.9% reduction in service time, the launch of the till system was considered a success. Sony Europe Sony Europe created a state-of-the-art learning portal that would deliver product knowledge to their dealers, resellers and customers in an enticing way. An eLearning tool achieved this and more. How? It created a highly interactive learning experience that encouraged take up and knowledge retention; boosted proficiency in using or installing Sony products through a series of "how to" training scenarios; and it measured success and improved dealer account management through automated tracking and reporting.  The platform is so feature-rich that the learning is sustainable and on-going. Salesforce A year before ExactTarget was acquired by Salesforce Marketing Cloud in 2013, Scott Thomas, Director of Product, set out to find a gamified training solution prior to the roll out of their MobileConnect marketing app. He found The Knowledge Guru by Bottom-Line Performance. This customizable, online game platform teaches users through an interactive narrative that requires them to answer questions and challenges in order to ascend a mountain and deliver a "scroll of wisdom" to the Guru (a great example of narrative-based gamification). Each mountain represents a broader subject area with its own learning objectives. The game lead MobileConnect to be the company’s fastest launch in 2 years. Walmart Walmart implemented Axonify’s gamified eLearning platform to reduce safety incidents as well as to improve compliance procedures and performance. The program, which ran for 6 months (an important element of success) saw increased retention; Lost Time cut by more than half; and below industry average Incident Rates and DART rates (Days Away from work, job Restrictions, job Transfers). How? Through training that was fun, fast, bite-sized, personalized (learners with different expertise levels set their own pace as content changed according to their response to questions) and that encouraged learners to experience the thrill of mastery and improvement. The game mechanics included in this gamification of eLearning included friendly team-based competition, points, leaderboards, and game play plus proven scientific methods of information retention thrown in for good measure. The fact that more than 75,000 U.S. Walmart associates still spend a couple of minutes a day receiving safety culture content, often in the form of questions, proves the success of the project. No traditional rote learning, weeks-long course or PPTs (yes, even the one that broke the Guinness Record for the most number of graphs ever) could have such an impact on a learner. An impact, as we said earlier, that motivates employees to learn, engages them, and even inspires them to want to refresh their memories. After all — who ever re-reads (if you even read it in the first place) that colossal document you received day one on the job that was meant to be the sacred writ on all things involving your tasks?  

Believing you are doing a good job is one thing. Getting external validation for that - and achieving the number one spot - is another. Today is such a day for the team at GamEffective. The Enterprise Gamification consultancy, headed by Mario Herger, published its Gamification Platform Leader Matrix for 2015. We are ranked at the very top, and nicknamed a "surprise" by the report’s author. The matrix is part of  the first Gamification Industry Report. The report compares 12 enterprise gamification platforms that are universal (i.e. not directed at just one enterprise gamification vertical such as sales or customer service, but working across many types of enterprise applications). The 12 platforms were ranked across multiple categories. The full report is available here. Looking to define Leaders, Followers and Contenders in the enterprise gamification space, the report plots product and service offerings against the visionary strength of each platform. The end result is clustering enterprise gamification platforms into three distinct groups: Leaders, Followers and contenders. Four companies are recognized as leaders: GamEffective, Infosys, Badgeville and Bunchball. According to the report, the top leader is GamEffective. Bunchball is located in the second place - and there is a tie between Badgeville and Infosys. The report notes that while the most attention in the past several years was given to Bunchball and Badgeville, GamEffective "has quietly executed and delivered with an impressively visionary approach." On the vision level, GamEffective was ranked number one in the report. On the "platform robustness" level, the report ranks GamEffective in the third place. The report’s author, Enterprise Gamification Guru Mario Herger says that leaders were chosen on the merits of being strong in both categories - both vision and platform robustness - with platforms that are both feature rich with the tools to design and operate a gamified system while also demonstrating a strong vision in their approach and platform architecture. Commenting further, Herger said that "Elements that define a strong vision can include the use of gamification design models, new standards, thought leadership in how to use gamification data, or the application of visual and novel gamification design elements".

In 2010, educational technology pioneer Bernard Luskin advocated that the "e" of e-learning should be interpreted to mean "exciting, energetic, enthusiastic, emotional, extended, excellent, and educational" in addition to "electronic." Dr. Eric R. Parks, Founder and President of ASK International, suggested that the "e" refer to "everything, everyone, engaging, easy." What they are saying is that eLearning isn’t about the method of delivery - through "electronic"- but that it carries the potential of engagement. Gamification is a big part of the potential of elearning. Based on a deeper understanding of human nature, how we learn and what motivates us to do so, it is evident that eLearning that incorporates game mechanics is far more successful. Why? Because people intrinsically love levels, missions and the satisfaction of doing something well. We are even prepared to repeatedly experience the "agony of defeat" to enjoy the "thrill of victory," the feeling of success, that we have mastered something, that we have surmounted a challenge. Given these insights, anything perceived as worth doing or worth learning is a perfect candidate for implementing gamification — whether its learning to play an instrument, learning a new language, learning to use the latest Microsoft Office, or even furthering one’s higher education. In fact, here is a closer look at five examples of successful elearning gamification. Guitar Hero and Joy Tunes: > "If music be the food of love, play on." William Shakespeare Most of us love music; not all of us can play it. However, it often takes years of practice… However, what if the learning curve was shortened and more fun? Guitar-Hero made waves when it offered people the opportunity to learn to play a video game guitar. Instead of frustration at the time it takes to learn guitar, guitar hero gave users immediate feedback and instant gratification. Do you know what the inventors of guitar hero are doing today? They’ve invented hardware that turns treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes - the stuff of training - into devices that are integrated with games. Music learning gamification is about that same thing: providing immediate feedback, gradually increasing levels of difficulty and constructing a manageable learning curve. JoyTunes’ award-winning Piano Maestro app uses the same approach for teaching piano. The app, that combines music methodologies with the latest in game mechanics, works directly with a real music instrument, no wires or cables needed. The app gives immediate feedback on playing, awards stars, and players unlock pieces as they move up in rank. It engages by encouraging children to "Progress up in chapters, unlock new songs and raise their difficulty level along the way. Learn to play songs step by step and have access to practice options and be able to personalize their learning experience" With 4 million users and a million songs played weekly, the app may show a way to make piano practice more fun. Duolingo "To have another language is to possess a second soul." ~ Charlemagne While many would agree with this quote and dream of learning a foreign language, it remains that — a dream. For students who are forced to do so at school, the dream can be more of a nightmare. DuoLingo has found a way around this — students learn a language online for free, while helping to translate websites and documents. They advance through stages of complexity, vote on each other’s translations, receive valuable feedback, are rewarded for success, and many other game mechanics challenge, motivate, and engage them — just as successful gamified eLearning should! Ribbon hero "Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it." ~ Theodore Roosevelt No matter how qualified you are in your profession and whether you need it or not, there are few jobs out there today that don’t require proficiency in Microsoft Office. Don’t despair, Microsoft’s epic game Ribbon Hero is here and available as a free download that can teach anyone how to use Office 2007 and 2010. Players are given challenges divided up into bite sized sections, earn points if they are completed, receive short relevant tasks as well as immediate feedback and reinforcement to keep them engaged and interested. The game is not too difficult, yet challenges and provides enough success to encourage further play and skill development. Basically, it hits the nail on the head of our intrinsic love of play, games, missions, fun, and winning. Ribbon Hero is also responsive to a users’ progress and adjusts challenges accordingly. Udacity "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." ~ Benjamin Franklin Mr. Franklin had no idea that he was describing the essentials for effective gamified eLearning. The same essentials harnessed by Udacity — the online university "by Silicon Valley" that offers free courses designed by educators and engineers in order to bridge "the gap between real-world skills, relevant education, and employment" as well as "to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world." Why the emphasis on engaging? Because Udacity recognizes that "education is no longer a one-time event but a lifelong experience" and "should be less passive listening (no long lectures) and more active doing." As such, each course consists of several units comprising video lectures with closed captioning, as well as quizzes to help students understand concepts and reinforce ideas, and follow-up homework to promote a "learn by doing" model as opposed to learning by rote. This also stresses the point that even in companies use gamified eLearning to teach new recruits the ropes, the learning should be ongoing and not end abruptly after week one. What do all these examples have in common? They are genius applications of gamified eLearning where the "e" means exciting, energetic, enthusiastic, emotional, extended, excellent, educational, engaging, easy, and for everyone!

Enterprise Gamification Consultancy’s Gamification Industry Report 2015, by lead researcher Mario Herger- available here - makes for an excellent read about what the future holds for enterprise gamification and what companies should know about it. I believe the report contains many nuggets of useful information, and I don’t believe that just because we got a favorable mention in the report’s Gamification Platform Leadership Matrix. The report covers in detail twelve platform providers and makes excellent comments on the state of the gamification market. The report (focusing on enterprise grade gamification, engagement and behavior modification platforms) reviews the state of the gamification world in 2015, marking its long-expected maturation from the novelty or exotic into a mainstream offering by large software vendors. Since I’ve been following Mario’s work for a while, and since I think the report has some valuable points to make, here are five take-aways from the report: Take Away 1: Enterprise gamification isn’t over and surely isn’t in the trough of disillusionment - in fact, it is just beginning to take hold in the enterprise Herger predicts that the gamification industry market is set to double within the next 12 months. I find this comment truly indicative of the fact that although the media hype around gamification reached its peak in 2012, the understanding of enterprise gamification and what it can do to employee performance and engagement is maturing just now. Herger makes the point that the entrance of new players, and especially SAP’s entry into gamification, signals a new phase in the market’s development. According to Herger, the entrance of such a dominant software vendor into the gamification market is a signal to corporate clients that gamification technologies are now moving from obscurity and novelty to the mainstream. Herger foresees that other large software vendors will enter the market within the next 12 to 18 months, and also expects a wave of consolidation. Take Away 2: Niche gamification vs universal The report focuses on universal gamification platform providers - such as gameffective, badgeville, bunchball, Infosys, SAP and others. Herger defines "universal" as gamification platforms that apply to more than one gamification use case - not just platforms for sales gamification, customer service gamification etc. The point here is that in realistic enterprise implementations, gamification needs to work across several enterprise apps, and can’t be relegated to just one use scenario (inside sales reps for instance). The whole point of gamification is an ability to give almost real time feedback on performance, so that employees can react and self-reflect. This requires good integration - and the addition of other integrations, such as elearning, is also a great need in the deployments we’ve seen at GamEffective, regardless of whether they are in the sales, customer service or other applications. Take Away 3: A gamification platform isn’t enough; customer success practices and game designers matter too. While the report places an emphasis on both the vision and robustness of gamification platforms it mentions that the choice of enterprise gamification platform only accounts for a portion of a successful gamification implementation strategy, with the rest accounted for by training, objective definition, game design. We’ve written about the fact that "everyone should know game design" and I truly believe in this vision. Yet fancy game elements and game mechanics don’t tell the entire story. As gamification merges with performance management, Herger makes the point (with which I wholeheartedly agree) that management needs to set good objectives that are well thought out… so that objective setting merges with gamification efforts, creating an integrated process and laying the groundwork for continuous improvement. On this level, I often hear from companies that they prize gamification for the fact that it made them focus on communicating objectives and KPIs clearly and tracking them on a real time basis. Take Away 4: Empathy is a core consideration in gamification design Herger mentions the importance of empathy in gamification design. I couldn’t have said it better. Empathy means considering gamification as a way to improve employee performance by increasing the employee’s well-being, and not by treating the employee’s work as mindless competition. Designing games well requires taking the point of view of the employee - having the employee be the hero of their game and letting their training, coaching and feedback take center stage, as opposed to making employees feel belittled by emphasizing their peers’ performance. Promoting extrinsic rewards or killer-type activity that focuses on employees out-playing their peers in fierce competition, isn’t realistic and isn’t good for both the employees and their employer. Take Away 5: taking a long term view of gamification Herger mentions that "most vendors and customers also neglect to establish a long term strategy for gamification. The focus in most projects is narrow and applied to one project only… without a strategy for sustainable engagement". Gamification in the enterprise should be sustainable, leaving lasting performance changes and not just a "Band-Aid" solution to artificially increase a certain activity. This is the main challenge of the industry and it will be solved by deep thinking about performance, long term engagement, and game designs that are flexible enough to evolve over time, keeping employees engaged.

Yu Kai Chou calls gamification human-focused design. I agree - enterprise gamification isn’t about fun (it never was) but is really about a new type of user experience or interface. Actually, the term "user experience" isn’t precise. Enterprise gamification is about the employee experience. It is about how employees experience and interface with the roles, tasks and behaviors they are expected to perform in the context of their work. It is about how they check on how they are doing and strive to improve it - a fitbit for work. Done well, gamification provides context, calls-to-action and a sense of meaningful work to employees - but the core question remains. How can companies get to the "gamification done well" phase? Some of it lies in good gamification design, using sound principles within the context of an organization or role and the desired employee behaviors. But some of it lies in using gamification analytics properly - and this is the core of this blog post. Analytics is a tool for doing things better If there is one thing that the Internet - or google analytics - has taught the world is the democratization of business intelligence. Many people now look at website (or app) analytics and try to understand how people interact with their site or app. They then use this for continuous optimization of their website or app. Gamification analytics is about that same idea: tracking behavior so that the interaction with the system (website, game or enterprise app) will become simpler, more compelling and more engaging. Let’s use a simple example: you’ve just released a new mobile game. We’ll call it "Sharks Gone Berserk". In this game, Sharks (all of which have gone berserk) are after you. The goal of the game is to run as fast as you can and make creative use of boxes in which you can hide. The game is split into levels which progress according to your level of mastery - just like any game. In the first levels, you are basically taught how the game works (aka onboarding). In the latter levels, you make use of the knowledge you’ve acquired to hopefully blaze through many levels and become a true master. Now let’s say you’ve released the game to the app store, just at the same day as your very best friend released their game - "Tigers gone berserk". After a week, your friend’s game had one thousand downloads. You have twenty. "What could I have done better?" you tell your friend, who is willing to help you despite the obvious rivalry between your sharks and his tigers. "Do you know how your players are doing?" he asks and adds "do you think they went through the onboarding phase and understood the game? Can they be stuck somewhere?" "No" you respond, "I don’t track anything on the game, but I am sure they are doing well. After all, I put a lot of thought in on-boarding and in designing the game levels". Your friend then cracks his laptop open. "Let me show you something" he says.  "I made sure I have analytics integrated into my game. I, too, had thought that the levels were even…. But see what I discovered after a week…". What your friend discovered was that (a) people weren’t using the lesson they ought to have learned in the first onboarding phases - meaning they didn’t "get" part of the game. But the worse thing was (b). Game users went through levels 1-5 fairly easily. Almost too easily. But only 1% of them managed to get past level 6. "What did you do?" you ask, trying to think what went wrong with your berserk sharks. "I changed level 6" he responds. If you want to optimize behavior, you need to optimize and analyze gamification This is exactly the point about gamification and analytics. If gamification is supposed to drive behavior at work - and the way people make use of enterprise apps - and is also supposed to be a "fitbit for work" - how can it be used if the game designer or game manager doesn’t know how it’s used. Imagine you include an eLearning module in a customer service gamification project. If you don’t measure it, how can you tell whether it is working? If you design a game with a dashboard showing whether an employee is "in the green" or "in the red" - shouldn’t you know if it is too easy to be in the green or almost impossible to stay out of the red? That’s why we’ve been putting a lot of thought lately into how we use (and offer our customers to make us of) gamification analytics. The stakeholders of gamification analytics A diagram prepared by Mika Nadel, our Strategic Projects Manager, drives the point home: Mika identifies the stakeholders that should care about gamification analytics: Game designers should track analytics to do their jobs well. They can use it to segment gamification users and target the right game rules and mechanics for them. They should be able to use gamification to see the difference between optimal game engagement and poor game engagement and more. The gamification owner at the customer is the person who chose a gamification project to complement performance. What matters here is the ability to view and control how the gamification experience improves users’ performance in the most effective way. We can drive each employee to improve his performance in a different way, and this can be done using gamification analytics to give visibility to track performance and act accordingly to be able to boost employees’ performance. Game administrators also use analytics - but they are more focused on tracking that everything is on track and on optimization. Last but not least, the gamification vendor uses gamification analytics to see comparative performance across games and customers, by segment. Here’s another great diagram by Mika, summing it all up: Using gamification analytics for long term engagement You began using analytics for "sharks gone berserk" to make sure people like your game, shared your game, bought your game and kept coming back to it. The sustainability of use and the integration of gamification into work are the main point of success in gamification. A one-month "challenge" to make people work a little harder to get a badge (an example of poor game design) just isn’t going to cut it for the future of gamification. Gamification needs optimization and a deep understanding of player segments, activities, levels and more. Only the use of analytics can ensure this really happens.

April 20, 2015: GamEffective, an enterprise gamification company and a narrative-based gamification pioneer, announced today it has raised a $ 3 M series A round. GamEffective offers a comprehensive gamification platform to support sales, customer service, social collaboration and employee training and elearning. The company is focused on the enterprise, and its platform uses game mechanics and game rules to grow employee engagement. GamEffective goes beyond badges or leaderboards and uses rich game narratives to give employees clear calls to action that encourage on the job mastery and leave lasting organizational change, reflecting corporate objectives and performance goals. GamEffective’s platform uses rich graphical narratives that range from fantasy sports to racing; and is easy to implement due to its no-code integration. Employee engagement is measurable, providing analytical insight into employee behavior and assisting employees in decision making - balancing corporate sales goals, for instance, with customer satisfaction. The investment round was led by Verint® Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT), a global leader in Actionable Intelligence® solutions and existing private investors that include 2B Angels and Shaked Ventures, Lipman, Chomski and others. The company’s seed round was led by 2B Angels and Shaked Ventures. "Gamification will become a staple of enterprise software UX, transforming corporate performance management and how goals and objectives are set and measured. ‘Game rules’ can direct employees to the right behaviors and cue them in rich, non-simplistic ways. This is the future of setting corporate and personal goals in the workplace," said Gal Rimon, Founder and CEO of GamEffective. "We are seeing an enormous interest in gamification of enterprise apps, our typical implementations leave lasting performance changes in organizational behavior". "Gamification is an important technology for the enterprise and further complements Verint’s customer engagement optimization portfolio of solutions," said Oren Stern, Senior Vice President, Product Strategy, Verint. "We are delighted to be working with GamEffective, as the organization is a proven provider of gamification solutions."

What is gamification about? Is it a long term or short term project? Is it about just getting people to use enterprise software - so it won’t lie idle - or is it about something deeper? Gamification as a cure for low usage rates of enterprise software I sometimes see people describe gamification as a short-term "fixer" for enterprise software adoption. In this scenario, the enterprise just invested in new software - for the sake of this example, we’ll say the enterprise invested in an enterprise social network. Since employees don’t seem to use that enterprise social network as they should have - not logging in at all, or logging in but doing very little, gamification has been called to the rescue. From now on, says the gamification vendor to the enterprise, gamification will encourage behaviors associated with adopting the enterprise social network. Usage rates will grow. Gamification elements used will range from the tried and true (but somewhat limited -see here) points, badges and leaderboards, to more effective next-generation game mechanics. Gamification can even be part of the design of the enterprise social network. Reading a recent article in computer world, "Can gamification solve enterprises’ engagement problem" leads to this conclusion. Here is what it says, quoting Steve Sims, founder and chief designer at Badgeville’s behavior lab: "One of gamification’s best uses in the enterprise may be simply getting people to use the software the company has invested in. "There are many benefits of gamification for enterprise software, but if I had to pick one, it would be adoption and engagement with the software itself," Sims said. … Usage rates for enterprise software often aren’t much better than 50 percent, he pointed out. By tapping into the right motivations, gamification could increase those numbers considerably. I still must raise the question of whether employee engagement equals software adoption (and no, I’m not discussing badgeville vs gameffective here…). I don’t think it does. My belief is that although software adoption is important - after all you want to make your technophile employee and the legacy employee use the same software and speak the same language - it isn’t what gamification is about. People can use the enterprise social network but not improve their performance, their team’s performance or the enterprise’s performance. Additionally, the case study presented above strikes me as horribly short-term in its outlook. It doesn’t tie enterprise social network use with performance. In that, it not only risks rewarding behavior that doesn’t impact the organization, it also risks rewarding activities that shouldn’t be rewarded, like excess posting or logging in - a case where gamification rules were sloppily defined, resulting in an opportunity for some players to game the system. Gamification isn’t just short term projects Is there are better way to describe the interplay between gamification and software adoption? I believe there is. Gamification should begin by looking at software adoption, for sure, but evolve into a longer lasting game with a more intricate view of performance. In this case, software adoption will be accomplished using an initial onboarding game (gamification, onboarding and elearning fit together well, since gamification rewards completion of learning tasks in a way most people find compelling). Afterwards, gamification will be used to drive performance, not adoption or use. It can, for instance, rank social network posts by their relevance and usability, tie the social network into knowledge sharing, or encourage certain employees (based on gamification analytics) to do something differently on the network. Gamification isn’t about software use; it is about what users do with the software What’s important to note is that a longer term project will last in setting and communicating performance goals and getting the employee to think about them. For instance, in a customer service setting, gamificaiton can help state complex goals that can cancel each other out - speed of service vs customer satisfaction (for instance), teaching employees to balance the two and acquire the skills to do so, giving them real time feedback to adjust their work, and giving them recognition for a job well done. Gamification isn’t a cute veneer on otherwise ugly to use software Darian Shirazi writes in Forbes ("The Consumerization of Enterprise Software") A few years ago, I remember that I tried using Salesforce for the first time. When I first interacted with the product, I felt like I was driving a Honda Accord: it was efficient and got the job done, but it wasn’t all that enjoyable to use or aesthetically pleasing. To my amazement, most enterprise software followed this trend: functionally sufficient, but poorly designed and often times difficult to use. He’s making the argument that Enterprise Software should be taking the track of becoming as pleasing and as intutitive as consumer-facing software. I fully agree. Slack’s success is great proof of this. In this respect, it is important to understand that gamification isn’t a walkme over otherwise ugly enterprise software with a cute "game-like" veneer. Gamification is about first encouraging behvaiours, but more importantly it is a way to set performance goals and manage them.

Swarm, a mobile app that continues the original Foursquare application of past fame, is a social check-in app. Foursquare was well known for its pioneering use of gamification, yet the initial launch of swarm omitted most of the gamification elements that had made Foursquare famous in the first place. Now, the new release of Swarm brings back a lot of the gamification fun that the original Foursquare once had. As I wrote several months ago, Foursquare is a great case study to try and understand what works and what doesn’t in enterprise gamification design, and to understand the strengths and weaknesses of points, badges and leaderboards. When Foursquare started out in 2009, gamification was a big part of its success. Users could get points for checking in some location, earn badges, and even achieve mayor status if they checked into a certain venue on more days than anyone else in the past 60 days. With time, social networks caught up with location based check-ins and Foursquare’s popularity began to decline. At a certain point Foursqaure even stopped using its famous points and badges system, which made it so popular in the first place. Foursquare explained this by saying that the game mechanics that worked when they had 50,000 users a day were not effective anymore once they grew to their current 50,000,000 users a day. People don’t want to compete against a mass of other people, and everyone that isn’t at the top of the leaderboard gets de-motivated quickly. As I mentioned in my previous post, what we can learn about gamification from Foursquare’s story is that gamification mechanics are powerful and can drive user behavior; yet they can’t work in a void. The gamified behavior has to contain an intrinsic value that is not tied to the game mechanics. Otherwise, the novelty will wear off. In other words, gamification isn’t an end in itself, but a design choice intended to drive real value for the user. The fact that Swarm has now decided to bring back gamification features, gives us the opportunity to reflect on what works and why: the modifications they made are telling and applicable to enterprise gamification. Leaderboards Leaderboards can be tricky. On the one hand, everyone likes to win and leaderboards tend to drive engagement. On the other hand, leaderboards are set up in a "winner takes all" manner that drives away everyone except the select few that are vying for the top spot. This is important - since coaching helps the middle 60%, not the top or bottom performers, and good enterprise gamification is a lot like coaching, since it implies the next best action. To make gamification work best, everyone has to have the feeling that they count. If not, you’ll find your users giving up early on and not engaging. It seems like the guys from Swarm have taken notice of this insight while avoiding leaderboards with too many participants. Swarm has the option to create a small leaderboard between friends as well as a one player game within the world of stickers. These smaller leaderboards may have a higher chance of working for several reasons. Firstly, the smaller number of participants enlarges the chance of finding yourself at the top of the board. Secondly, these small leaderboards leave room for the creation of a feeling of a "team" between a group of friends, whereas anonymous leaderboards create alienation instead of connection. In addition, the option for a single player game enables users to experience their progress in relation to themselves. The user becomes the hero of their game which creates a lot more engagement with the gamification mechanism (Swarm in this case) and much more enjoyment for the user. Collecting badges and stickers People have been collecting things as a hobby for centuries. Stamps, cards, memorabilia; Badges and stickers are the digital evolution of this habit. Users tell us that they feel that their badges and stickers are a great way to express something unique about themselves that enriches their online profile and presence. Although we emphasize the importance of encouraging intrinsic motivation, this method (which in essence is a form of extrinsic motivation) can be a good supplement to intrinsic motivators.  Users can send a message about their achievements, and in the case of Swarm, of the places they frequent and favor. Research also shows that the scarcity of an item (as in the case of the badges and stickers in swarm) enlarges its desirability. It will be interesting to see how Swarm’s return to gamification mechanics affects their popularity and how it assists them in returning to the engagement level that was enjoyed in the past by Foursquare. We’ll be watching, so check out the blog for updates!

A screen shot of posture.io credit: techcrunch One of the benefits of gamification is the immediate feedback it can give people about performance. I believe this is one of the more salient points about gamification, but it is nevertheless often missed as people imagine looking at their leaderboard position at the end of the day, but don’t get the compelling immediacy of gamification and its power of real time feedback. What gamification offers is that instead of a too-late discovery - "oh, I’m not performing well today", which immediately dampens enthusiasm for the remainder of the day - performance can be reflected as feedback immediately, effectively indicating the next best action. Gamification can be used to immediately tell people how they are doing and give them the auto-corrective measures to do so. That’s why we’ve compared gamification to fitness trackers such as fitbit and even wrote about the quantified self becoming the future of HR software. I’m always on the lookout for great examples of how gamification and feedback work well. One of the better known examples is Target’s use of gamification and feedback for its cashiers. Another example I just discovered, through this TechCrunch article, is posture.io. So, gamification feedback examples, here we go: Target as a case study - Feedback-centric gamification turns work in to a game for younger employees Target has quite a well-known gamification mechanic for its cashiers - you can read about it here. The cash register monitors the time it takes the cashiers to handle each client and gives them simple and immediate feedback on their screen. Employees see one of three letters (G, Y, and R for green, yellow and red), which indicates whether they have met their speed requirements on the last transaction. In this case, if they inadvertently slowed down, they are immediately notified. If they are doing well, they can see that too, and feel accomplished.  In addition they can see an indication of their average speed for the last several transactions - a personal benchmark for achievement rather than an external one. Interestingly, the different Target employees have differing views on the practice. While the older employees feel that this is a simple way for Target to monitor employees and send them a message about the need for efficiency and speed, the younger employees feel quite differently. Having grown up with video games and various gamification engagement features in all walks of life, younger employees see the target feedback in more of a positive manner. One employee even said that it "makes work feel like a game". The point of the feedback here is that it is constant, giving cashiers an immediate indication of their performance. The interesting side here is whether the positive cue given by meeting the requirements is enough of an immediate "brain" reward to make checking performance a habit. Is craving that reward a driver for cashiers to pace themselves and perform better?.  To me it seems that this is the case. As millennials start comprising more and more of the workforce, gamification will become more and more acceptable and natural. After all, these are employees that were born in to a world where internet exists everywhere, everybody owns a laptop or tablet, and smartphones are an essential tool. As a result, they are much more experienced in interacting in a playful way with machines and technology and in sensing emotional achievement while doing so. Posture.io - a hack to sit up straight   "Sit up straight" is what teachers and parents tell children. Kids slouch at tables. They are reminded to sit up straight. This is a feedback mechanism of sorts. Posture.io is this same feedback mechanism, and is the brainchild of developer Joe Heenan, which was presented at the recent Techcrunch Disrupt NY event. Using simple and affordable hardware (the device’s total cost is around $30), Heenan has invented a device which connects to the back of the wearer’s belt and detects whether they are slouching or sitting upright. The interesting part is that the user’s interaction with the app is through a posture score, and as Heenan says "your goal is to keep your posture score as close to 100 as possible". Immediate feedback - here we come! A hack for training through gamification Another way to raise your posture score is by doing a series of hand gestures over the motion gesture controller which is part of the device. These gestures are similar to those recommended by physiotherapists to patients developing hand problems as a result of overuse.  This game mechanism is really a way of letting the player make up for poor performance by undergoing additional tasks and training. In enterprise gamification we use this mechanic for the lesser performing players, which can choose to undergo training or micro-learning in the system to make up points. Rather than punishing performance, this approach gives the player new tools and better training for better future performance. Habit forming and gamification Posture.io is another example of how gamification is being used to change people’s habits. Habit formation is also an important aspect of gamification. For all of us, having better work habits could be extremely beneficial. Research shows that the average employee is only productive for three hours a day (!). The problem is that even when the best intentions exist, it isn’t easy for any of us to change our habits. That’s exactly where gamification, and the constant feedback that it brings, can really help to make a difference. As mentioned, gamification software is all about telling us how we’re doing, sometimes without us even realizing that that’s what is happening. This feedback can be the first and essential step on the road to formation of new habits. We can expect to see such feedback mechanics integrated in to more and more areas of our lives as technology infiltrates every aspect of our existence. People have always had a desire to know how they are doing, be it regarding their work, their health, their popularity or any number of other areas. It seems like the combination of technology and gamification will make this possible even more. We will all sit up straight, and if we’re cashiers, we will work really fast.

We live in a world that idealizes the genius innovator. From Henry Ford to Steve Jobs, we find it incredible that a single person could see the world entirely differently and then make that difference happen.  It also helps that the stories of inventions and the characters behind them are great storytelling material. We accept that Jobs’s knack for details and design was a natural gift that couldn’t be taught or replaced and that Ford’s understanding of the innermost desires of the American consumer came to him naturally. These notions may very well have some truth to them, but with the introduction of technology and the connectedness that it brings with it, we all may need to be prepared to open up to a new way to arrive at creation and innovation. Gamification for innovation and the wisdom of the crowds In contrast to this idea of the ‘individual genius’, the last few years have seen the rise of the notion of ‘wisdom of the crowds’. Countless crowd powered platforms have become immensely popular. Be it in the field of art production (Kickstarter, indiegogo), question-and-answers (like Quora), or medicine (crowdmed), it seems that there’s a business trying to incorporate the wisdom of the crowds in to every possible sector. There is an understanding that although the idea of a single innovator has a certain romantic appeal to it, there may be a much more efficient way to go about it, which is actually almost completely opposite to the way we’ve gotten used to thinking about innovation. Obviously, the thing that all these platforms depend on is the involvement of their respective crowd. Waze wouldn’t be worth much if not for its enthusiastic community, which allows us to know the state of traffic on the road like never before, and nobody would think of turning to Kickstarter to try and get their music album out, if they didn’t know that there were enough music fans on the platform who may decide to back the project. In many of these platforms, gamification mechanics play an important part in bringing the crowd to participate and engage with the platform. They use variations on karma point and other forms of gamification mechanics for recognution. In addition, gamification is many times responsible for motivating and focusing the innovating activities of the community that is created around a platform. It can create clear objectives, rules and rewards for those who take part in the creation process that the platform is undertaking. Driving innovation in the enterprise The role gamification plays in innovative processes is not limited only to these platforms. Many organizations are using gamification mechanics to foster innovation within their firms. Many social and collaboration gamification projects are intended to foster information sharing and, as a side effect, innovation. Since people are naturally creative and eager to express themselves, sometimes all that is needed is a framework which motivates employees to do just that, and which enables them to do it easily. A great example of this comes to us from one of the best known brands in the world - Coca Cola. The company has recently created an app that enables users to mix several existing Coca Cola drinks to create a new one, name it, and then share the new drink with their friends on social media. Afterwards, it is possible to actually drink the newly created beverage at a FreeStyle machine, which is a new generation of fountain dispenser that the company has invented for this purpose. Through gamification mechanics, the company is able to engage in a new way with younger customers that have come to expect a consumer experience which enables them to easily relate their thoughts about a product. For this to be a meaningful experience that achieves its goals, it must have enjoyable and playful aspects to it which make the customer want to use it again and again. While enterprise gamification is mostly directed at coaching people to work well - through a deep understanding of their roles and a growth of engagement - and is used less for innovation per se or for the knowledge workers, it can learn from great examples of gamification, such as those used by Quirky or Barclaycard. It seems that the way we arrive at innovative ideas is undergoing a major change and that gamification is destined to play a major role in this change process. Companies and organizations can now utilize gamification mechanisms which enable, motivate and guide employees in the course of the creative process.

I’ve noticed that every time I write about enterprise gamification - from it being the quantified-self for employee performance engagement through sales gamification, customer service gamification, social gamification and more - elearning always comes up. There are several explanations for why elearning always pops up when we discuss enterprise gamification: It works. Elearning works exceptionally well, by driving individual achievement through the use of completion game mechanics, feedback and recognition. Something about the pace, the rewards and the way in which most elearning material is pre-prepared trumps class-based learning. This has been recognized by many: the internet is awash with material about elearning for an amazing amount of learning scenarios: school, high-school, university, moocs, and the workplace. Enterprises need elearning. There are many instances where elearning is important to the enterprises’ success. Employees can become more engaged if they know their job better, elearning can serve to coach the poorer performing employees, policies can be communicated and new product introductions can be made. Elearning is best served on the side. In many cases, elearning is not the core activity for an employee, but an important aside. For instance, when a customer service agent has some downtime, emotional intelligence elearning or elearning about new offerings is a valuable addition. Combining elearning into daily work tasks is more efficient and results in more information retention. All of the above is why, in many cases, we see enterprise gamification projects where we first gamify various enterprise apps, from CRM to contact center and workforce optimization. The second thing we do is simple: we integrate elearning into the gamification project, because it works well. It also delivers a better ROI on both the gamification and elearning investment. Having said all that, here are our 7 ways to integrate elearning into enterprise gamification: Number 1: Micro learning Micro-learning breaks learning into small bite-sized pieces. A short video about a new product, a quiz about the sexual-harrasment policy, a presentation about how to overcome customer anger in a call center environment.  Made for this generation’s shorter attention spans, micro-learning is short and effective. Micro-learning is a curriculum that is accessible anytime and anywhere. In the enterprise, micro-learning makes life easier for trainers since they need to develop shorter chunks of training that can be delivered anywhere. Another important micro-learning benefit it that it gives employees a sense of autonomy and control. They can choose what to learn and when, giving a sense of self-direction which is important to employee satisfaction. Many believe that micro-learning also results in better information retention, since information is accessed when the user needs it to complete a task. To integrate micro-learning, decide on the model you will use to invoke it. For instance, you can gamify salespeoples’ learning of a new product that was introduced, or use micro-learning  as a pre-requisite to get to play a sales competition. Micro-learning can result in recognition (an expert badge) or simply as a way to earn more points and advance in the game. Micro-learning can also be integrated in a coaching scenario, where an employee that isn’t performing well, can be rewarded for training - with the goal of coaching the employee with the information they are missing to do their job well. Gamification can: Track the use of micro-learning and prove it took place Encourage the use of micro-learning through calls to action Provide much needed recognition and social proof for micro-learning Number 2: elearning as a form of on the job training Elearning that is combined into any gamification project is one of the most effective on-the-job training there is. For instance, a call center agent with poor customer satisfaction ratings can be directed to on-the-job training to amend that. A sales person that isn’t making enough new product proposals? Some on the job training about the new product offerings. It’s that simple. Number 3: Learning as a form of communication In many cases, we see enterprise gamification projects that are all about communication. Enterprises have a need to communicate objectives, goals and expected results. They want their employees to keep these in mind at work and balance their performance accordingly. Combining elearning can be an important way of communicating these expectations, such as the need to sell more of a certain offering etc. Sometimes, the communications around the gamification project can be as impactful as its associated behavioral change - communicating performance objective and then seeing how your peers work is an important form of social proof. Number 4: Integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS) Enterprise gamification is evolving into a top tier that is integrated across several enterprise applications. To cover the employee application path at the workplace, from the main app through social and knowledge sharing and into LMS, enterprise gamification must integrate seamlessly with these applications, to deliver a cross app experience. As a result, many gamification projects get their learning "feeds" from the LMS. The LMS is also impacted, through gamification analytics, as the results coming from gamification analytics indicate how employees respond to the content in the LMS, resulting in further optimization of the content and its delivery. Number 5: in-class gamification Gamification can be used in class-based training, by encouraging team participation - here’s a case study on using gamification in a class environment, where the choice of team incentives drove strong engagement with the materials. After all, no one wants to be the person which brings their team down. Number 6: on-boarding On-boarding new employees is a form of training and elearning that enables self-directed learning for new employees. We’ve written about it here. Number 7: refresher games Sometimes, there is a need for gamification to fit into a larger communication campaign - a refresher course in areas such as safety, sexual harassment and compliance policies. Using gamification to deliver these short refresher courses and integrating them into the on-the-job duties and calls to action is more efficient and engaging.

Each enterprise software vertical has its most quoted statistical factoid. Here’s a fictional one - "in the year 2525 every enterprise will implement a zillion micro-services". The world of enterprise gamification has two oft-quoted statistics, and they are quoted all too often. Statistic number 1: employees are not engaged The first often-quoted statistic is that about 70% of employees are disengaged. This statistic (available here as measured by Gallup) is often followed by an attempt to estimate the economic costs of such disengagement - at the hundreds of millions of dollars, or mote. Gallup’s recent release says that it "recorded employee engagement at 31.5% at the end of 2014, which was the highest reading since 2000. The current year-to-date average is 32.0%." This means that 68% of employees are disengaged. While Gallup concludes the numbers are rising, they are "slight progress …the majority of the nation’s employees still fall into the "not engaged" category." Statistic number 2: 80% of gamification projects will fail The second most quoted statistic about gamification comes from Gartner. In late 2012, at the top of the hype cycle about gamification, Gartner came out with a press release titled "Gartner Says by 2014, 80 Percent of Current Gamified Applications Will Fail to Meet Business Objectives Primarily Due to Poor Design". I’ve seen this number quoted many times. Today, I believe gamification is taking off in the enterprise.  Large enterprise players, such as Verint, Infosys, SAP and IBM are investing in gamification. But what is really unmistakable is the interest large enterprise companies are having in gamification and the willingness to address employee engagement by thinking deeply about gamification, without the fallacy of taking is as a form of "fun" or "videogame" veneer on top of work. But Gartner was spot on in making that 2012 forecast, because the gulf separating good gamification design from poor gamification design is far and wide. In 2012 some of the emerging views of gamification were indeed overly simplistic; the industry is still dealing with their ramifications today. But what’s really interesting is the vision Gartner had , voiced by Brian Burke, its research vice president (and author of a 2014 book about gamification) which I wholeheartedly agree with: The challenge facing project managers and sponsors responsible for gamification initiatives is the lack of game design talent to apply to gamification projects… Poor game design is one of the key failings of many gamified applications today." "The focus is on the obvious game mechanics, such as points, badges and leader boards, rather than the more subtle and more important game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy. As a result, in many cases, organizations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience. Some organizations are already beginning to cast off poorly designed gamified applications." By the way, if you’d like to, you can read the original Gartner report here (it’s free, but requires registration). Gamification: designing employee behaviour In a section discussing gamification for employees - known today as enterprise gamification, Gartner made some prescient forecasts and presented a compelling analysis. I’d like to highlight this and show how it has evolved since 2012: 1. Gamification isn’t just about competition. The currency of gamification isn’t about "outwitting and outlasting" anyone, as some reality shows have programmed us to think. In general, the currency of gamification isn’t triumphing over others. Gartner got that correctly, in a space that was teeming with announcements about employees competing against each other for badges. Here’s what Gartner had to say: "Gamification uses the currencies of social capital, self-esteem and fun overtaking extrinsic rewards as motivations for improved performance" Looking at the state of gamification today, I think Gartner were spot on regarding the dwindling importance of competition. Today, everyone recognizes that social proof plays a big part in gamification - we want to be like others - and gamification mirrors the actions of our fellow employees, prompting behavioral change. Self-esteem is also a driver- a need to feel mastery at work - but what today is becoming most salient is that gamification is becoming a form of the quantified self. Tracking performance and measuring it have been proven to be a powerful motivator, and many gamification platforms are today even forsaking the nomenclature of "gamification" and using "performance platform" or "fitbit for work" to make this point about gamification. 2. Gamification isn’t about top performers either In 2012 Gartner said that "competitive games will play less of a role in employee performance being displaced by collaborative games that are designed to maximize business outcomes, rather than rewarding a few top performers". And indeed, in 2015 we see the rise of modified leaderboards which are designed to motivate the middle 60% and not highlight those people that always stay at the top. You can read about best practices for leaderboards here and about how team incentives work better than individual ones. 3. Gamification is about feedback One of the most interesting - and less conspicuous -  aspects of gamification is that it collects real time feedback about our performance, and then delivers it in real time, giving us constant feedback that is immediate in its ability to coach or remedy behavior. We’ve written about this here - reviewing the importance of feedback to things like sitting up straight or working a cash register. Gartner got this right, too: "Employee performance feedback will move from being top-down and periodic (often annual) to being social, peer-based and real-time." The importance of immediate feedback shouldn’t be underestimated. Instead of hearing, at the end of the week, that you didn’t perform well, you get immediate feedback on how your’e doing, how it compares to your benchmarks and past performance and to your peers. This constantly aligns behavior expectations and tells you if you’re in the red or in the green. This, in fact, is the quantified self, and it creates well-being, since you always know where you stand and (as we will soon show) what you should do next. 3. Gamification will change performance management Today, even the annual review and setting performance goals and measuring them are changing, with the advent of companies like betterworks, which promotes the objective and key results method used by Google, Linkedin and Intel, in which employee performance objectives are set in a transparent way and are constantly assessed and revised. We also wrote about gamification as a form of performance management for lower level employees (here’s our post), and we believe that is the right thing to do. Gartner forsaw this too: "In knowledge work, such as project management or product design, emergent game structures will be more common than scripted games. In emergent games, players are provided with the goals, tools, rules and space to play… the outcome cannot be defined, but the goal is defined. Extending this approach for complex goals that require multiple players, self-organizing teams can be formed to achieve the goal." 4. Gamification as a form of script for work In the 2012 Gartner describes two forms of gamification - for knowledge workers (emergent games) and for lower skilled employees. It then introduces the idea of the scripted game: "In low-skilled jobs, such as service desk analysts, scripted games will present workers with specific tasks and rewards to be completed, and workers will be motivated with social recognition within the workgroup and mastery of the tasks — while there are large risks in using scripted games, they can also be useful in motivating low-skilled workers" In this, Gartner forsees the future of gamification. Workers will be motivated by mastery (a job well done) and by social recognition (since extrinsic drivers don’t work; intrinisic motivation trumps extrinsic motivation). The interesting part is the use of the word "scripted". Scripted means that employees are directed towards the next behavior (next best action) and not just by a competition to do something many times, or perform many actions over and over again. This idea is used by us today. We’re using it to introduce micro-learning and just in time learning in games, to show the "next best action" to employees and to direct them to the right courses of action. This works to get salespeople to work better with the CRM and directs customer service employees better. 5. Gamification is changing corporate culture If you’ve been following till here, it becomes obvious that the result is a change in how corporations and employees interact: a change in corporate culture stemming from a different understanding about what motivates employees and how to motivate them. This isn’t a culture of "fun video games" as could be argued in 2012, it is a culture that views the alignment of goals between employee and employer with a new way of thinking. Gartner got this right too: "Current top-down, command and control management approaches are being replaced by game design skills. Successful managers in the future will be great designers of games … that are designed to achieve specific business outcomes" "Organizations should seek to clearly define the organizational objectives of employee-facing applications, understand employee objectives and focus on where the two overlap. Applications should be people-centric and enable employees to be successful in achieving their objectives — where they are aligned with organizational objectives". So, where is gamification today? Hype? or Plateau of Productivity? In 2012, according to Gartner, gamification was at the "Peak of Inflated Expectations", just before the "Trough of Disillusionment".  However, Gartner was never dismissive of gamification. It just thought it would take people some time to get it right - failure that comes before success. Where is gamification today? Based on the demand I see in the market, the market is ripe. I hope we get to Gartner’s "Plateau of Productivity" soon, because, just like Gartner, I am convinced that gamification has the potential of being truly transformational.    

We are all in a state of constant learning. Whether on the job, at school, or when keeping up with the latest technology - learning is one of the most fundamental tasks we have. Yet learning, especially in the context of work, isn’t always that enjoyable. Learning something new, regardless of how important it is, can be an extremely difficult task. While at school, if we weren’t really in to a certain subject, we could hang low during those specific lessons and do just enough to get by. At work, it’s an entirely different story. Performance is greatly dependent on acquiring new skills, such as increased adoption of enterprise software, the use of knowledge management systems and more. It is also a factor of knowledge - emotional intelligence in dealing with customer complaints or product knowledge when offering new solutions to customers. Bridging the desire to learn and the motivation to do it In these situations, where learning is vital but motivation may be low, gamification technology can assist us greatly in achieving our goals. Firstly, gamification can really help with increasing motivation. Learning is always a journey, but sometimes it feels like you’re actually walking in place. By using completion game mechanics, gamification can assist in illustrating the progress that is taking place, and in giving the user a true sense of how far she has come since starting her journey towards this new body of knowledge, whatever it may be. Using mechanics such as badges, points, levels, and progress boards, users can monitor and exhibit how far they’ve come, as well as how they are doing in comparison to their coworkers and friends. People have a natural tendency to want to improve and learn new skills, but they aren’t always sure what the best way to achieve that is. Gamification offers just that. By breaking up the learning process into manageable sections that the user can take in without feeling overwhelmed by the breath of the subject that he is attempting to learn, gamification allows for a steady improvement and learning experience. Peer-learning, tutoring and mentoring Learning is so much more enjoyable when it is done together with others. Gamification offers solutions that can enable the employees in your organization to connect with other learners - read this case study about Microsoft -  ask questions, debate topics and motivate each other to keep on improving. Learning can be presented as a team challenge as well - people are more motivated about working to achieve team challenges than individual ones. Gamification can also connect those who are mastering new skills with those in your organization that already have a good knowledge of that specific skill. Some organizations we’ve encountered have coaching systems, where veteran employees help newer ones to master new capabilities, tying into the fact that gamification serves as a great tool to coach performance. Leading the way in gamified learning Several organizations are leading the way in integrating gamification in to learning processes. One of the most veteran ones is Khan Academy, which has been using gamification mechanics more or less since its inception. Users collect energy points when they complete lessons and view videos. Students on the platform are also provided with statistics and analytics about their progress and improvement. Duolingo is another great example of how gamification is used to assist in learning a new skill (languages, in this case). The Duolingo experience is designed like a lighthearted game full with trophies, cute characters that pop up and encourage you to continue your language learning journey, and a scoreboard where you can see how you’re doing in comparison to your other friends who are using the platform. Simple elements of goal achievement and curiosity are taken advantage of, as the more advanced lessons "open up" only after you have already completed the earlier ones, and cannot be accessed otherwise. In enterprise gamification, elearning activities are combined with general gamification, regardless of whether it is a sales, customer service or other gamification. You can read more here. Gamification can greatly assist the learning process. Whether within an organization or for your own benefit, these simple mechanics can help those who are trying to improve and learn new skills reach their goals.  

There is one constant: everything is subject to change, whether we like it or not. In order to optimize organizational performance, companies must be able to change. However, in many cases employees and managers find it difficult to embrace change, and the transition can be experienced as stressful or impossible. In organizations, constant changes in the workforce (millennials), in underlying technologies, business fundamentals, strategy and processes need to be managed. The move from the current context into a new context becomes a necessity. As more changes occur, employees should be given more performance feedback on the changes that need to be made, creating the need for a continuous improvement process. Gamification is uniquely suited to organizational change management. Here’s how: What is change management? Change management is about transitioning into a desired future state. Change is a structured, multi-phase process, from defining the vision for a change, to creating a strategy to effect it and motivating the actual change. Motivating the workforce is essential to change management, but not trivial to accomplish.  This is where gamification comes in. Comfort zones and habits matter. People dislike change. Yet, as change cycles are becoming shorter and companies need to react quickly, being able to carry out change and transformational processes becomes strategic. What is gamification? People play games for many reasons. Gamification, the use of game mechanics to influence performance and create accountability, isn’t play or a game, but uses game techniques to influence behavior. These game mechanics satisfy basic human psychological needs: a sense of competence, autonomy and relatedness. While brownie points, frequent flyer miles and other forms of consumer gamification have been around for years, these simplistic programs rely on extrinsic reward. Gamification uses the "third drive" - intrinsic motivation - which is a much stronger driver of long term engagement. It also uses sophisticated game mechanics and takes a long term approach to behavioral changes and employee work-habit creation. Gamification - through its power to communicate goals and give real time feedback about employee achievement - is an ideal tool for Change Management, enabling smooth structural change. Gamification is a powerful tool of transformational change. It can be used to support better user engagement and feedback, giving powerful indicators of process improvement.  For instance, to change work habits, gamification can help explain the change, through gamified elearning, support the change, form habits and drive engagement. Gamification and change management as a continuous process In the past, change management was a planned process, with three phases: unfreeze the organization, change it; and then refreeze the new configuration. However, as changes become more frequent an alternative approach is process centered, where organizational change is continuous and evolving. In this approach, the organization constantly needs to adapt to an unpredictable and rapidly changing environment. The focus isn’t just on one grand change to be implemented and then frozen, but on many small adjustments that can produce significant change over a relatively long period. In this aspect, change management is a subtle process that is ongoing, a pre-requisite for a healthy organization that can detect and react to changes in its environment. The gamification toolkit for change management Gamification can drive transformational journeys for the workforce, whether a post-merger culture change or a re-alignment of processes and habits. In all these cases the gamification efforts is centered on adoption. The decision to invest in a new platform or system is usually driven by technology.  Yet the question of how people will react to this change is not taken seriously. Even if there is a structured process - training, awareness and briefings - people forget a lot of what they were taught by the time the system goes live. In this instance, gamification can motivate people to perform new activities over and over again, for on the job learning.  Doing things over and over again forms habits. At some point the new behavior stops being new. It just becomes "business as usual", the most appropriate way to behave in the organization, which, in turn, affects corporate culture. Gamification and transactional workforces Today, gamification works well for the transactional workforce: whether it is customer facing employees, or back office knowledge workers. Some of them don’t even work for the company, they are what we call "the extended workforce" - contractors or part of managed services. These jobs can be repetitive, but the performance differences between employees are great. Helping more average performers become top performers can have a very positive impact on the organization. As the workforce changes, and more jobs become automated, you need to shift people’s talents to different avenues. In the past, transformational journeys took three years. Today they need to happen quickly, using gamification. What type of adoption is required for change management gamification? In consumer gamification - frequent flier miles or similar campaigns - gamification has an impact on performance even if less than 5 or 10 percent engage with it. However, in organizations, anything less than 75% engagement with new systems or processes isn’t enough for change. That’s why gamification for change management means good game design and not a game mechanic slapped on top of an existing system. Another difference compared to consumer gamification is that organizational change gamification should be longer running. Quick adoption wins are needed, but longer term engagement needs to made, as well as having the gamification for change management there for any additional change management needs in an environment of continuous improvement.

We recently deployed our gamification platform to encourage adoption of a knowledge sharing platform implemented by one of our customers. Before gamification, the knowledge management platform wasn’t used much by the workforce (customer service employees spread across countries and continents). The goal of the gamification implementation was to form new habits of creation and consumption of knowledge management content. The narrative used was city building - more articles meant more assets, and articles that were useful contributed to the city as well. Both individual and team challenges were used, as well as external game communication. The case study results were presented as an infographic, which we wanted to share with our blog’s readers.  

Wellness.  Can we even imagine what that meant when cigarettes were not considered a health risk? Being productive. What did that mean when office work was performed with a pen and paper, and knowledge workers had libraries they referred to at work? Technology doesn’t only change the way we communicate, maintain our social circles or retrieve information. It changes the way we understand ourselves. It creates new emotions, new pleasures and pains. It profoundly affects our innermost personal and work lives. What is the next thing that will effect a similar change? Activity trackers are redefining how we understand ourselves and our achievement The way activity trackers benchmark our personal performance and communicate it to the world is one of those points where technology impacts our lives. Gamification - or at least gamification 2.0 (also known as performance gamification) - is a key part of this future. The meteoric rise in popularity of wireless-enabled wearable products, such as those by Fitbit and Jawbone - activity and wellness trackers -  has brought us with one of those points where technology impacts how we think of ourselves. Initially, before wearables, the quantified self meant self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology. You were supposed to tell what the effect of the foods you consumed - or any other activity - had on your wellness.   But as wearables have gone from unsophisticated pedometers to state-of-the-art insight-engines, the very concept of ‘health’ has been demystified and broken into activities such as eating, sleeping and moving, by quantifying each and every one of these activities. Suddenly, tracking miles a person has run becomes a truly satisfying activity, a combination of achievement, control and even exhilaration. Data shows that Fitbit users take 43 percent more steps than non-Fitbit users. Jawbone users tracked over 150 million nights of sleep last year, making it the largest sleep study in the history of humankind. Self tracking as a form of intrinsic drive Daniel Pink made an important point in his book "drive" - the "third drive" - intrinsic motivation, is the best and most consistent driver. Dan Ariely validated that too by showing that people work harder for intrinsic motivation than for extrinsic rewards, such as money or competition. What activity trackers do is quantify intrinsic drive, benchmark our performance and drive us to do more. Instead of letting us guess how well we did or did not do, it shows us objective measurements, and these drive us to achieve more. Activity tracking is transforming social proof Every time you see someone post their run results on facebook you can see that activity trackers are also used to communicate achievement. By doing that, people are seeking the recognition of their efforts, but are also creating social proof that pulls more people into the activity tracker circle. Activity trackers for work But is this new toolset - tracking performance for self-motivation - applicable at work? The answer is yes. Tracking performance  is applicable, and some pioneers have begun adopting it, mainly through performance gamification. Here is why the concept is a powerful one, and how it marries well with gamification. Frequently Quantifying Performance: Gamification and activity trackers frequently quantify performance which is tracked transparently, objectively and in real time. These are some of the core benefits behind gamification. This means that an employee is not working according to a fuzzy feeling they did really well last week. It means that they actually have the real time data and benchmarks at their fingertips.  it also means that that employee’s manager is also evaluating him/her objectively. One of the new game mechanics we’ve begun using is "green day-red day" reflecting whether there was a good or bad day for the employee, as a form of self reflection and an ability to take the commitment to make the next day a better day. Turning Big Data into Achievable Insights: By tracking employee performance through gamification of enterprise apps, employers can easily see what’s working and what’s not and optimize work for employees. Sincerity and Social Support: The impact on the quantified self of a network of supportive friends, colleagues, or one’s family, is momentous. Jawbone users who lost the most amount of weight had 11 percent more teammates. The same principles apply at work. When employees see their goals on a gamification app, set clearly and transparently and based on objective measures, they are more likely to achieve them. Additionally, the fact that performance is shared with peers increased the employee’s interest in achieving these goals. Until now, managers have been hampered in their ability to track work progress, convey powerful insights about employees and have a strong basis of facts about the work being done. Wearables can measure and track many aspects of health — from calories to steps, hours slept, minutes active, saturated fats — but what about measuring and quantifying work? Do you also think that gamification is a form of performance tracking to create intrinsic drive?  

In many cases, gamification projects are really about using gamification for change management. The goal is the adoption of new behaviors to create new habits. For instance, driving adoption of and contributions into a knowledge management system. This was exactly the case when one of our customers called us. They had problems getting a cross-continent team of customer support specialists make use of a knowledge management system: they wanted to gamify the use of the knowledge management system, and reward people for creating and consuming content on it. We chose a city building narrative, designed the game and were ready to go. There was just one problem: the knowledge management  was hardly ever used by anyone at the company. Why would people log into it now? This problem is actually common in using gamification for change management or adoption. The answer to the problem is fairly simple:  just like mobile app and web-based app providers have many strategies of reminding users to use their systems using a variety of customized messages, gamification can make great use of email for communication. We’re written about how communicating enterprise gamification projects makes a difference and better align corporate goals with employees’ understanding of their roles and their expected behaviors. Now we want to share how the use of email can drive employees to get excited about gamification and get reminded about gamification until the project really takes off. Here are some examples of an actual campaign we had: 1. Creating expectations with teasers   2. Stating the rules of the game:     3. Giving progress notifications   4. Giving reminders throughout the duration of the project:   Want to see what the results of the knowledge management gamification project were? check them out here!

Vikram Subramaniam, VP Customer Experience at Elance-Odesk-Upwork, is a customer experience expert. We met with him to discuss his views of gamification and customer experience. Prior to Upwork, Vikram ran customer experience at Yahoo!. He also spent time in senior roles at Ebay, KPMG, and Netflix.   The three elements of customer experience Q: Your career was both on the product and customer experience sides. Is there a connection? A: Consumer companies are becoming experience companies. This is driven by three things: the marketing experience, the product experience, and then the service experience. The marketing experience is the promise and expectations made to the customer. The product experience is what gets delivered to the customer. The service experience is the actual relationship with the customer As all three elements converge, customers have come to expect a cohesive experience, from marketing through product and service. Consumers expect each one of these things to be equally as good. It just won’t do to have a great product experience alongside a mediocre service experience.   There is much more pressure on companies to be great on all three concurrently and right out of the gate. Customer experience has changed in the past 10-15 years. In the past, customer service was about waiting for the customers to come to us. This isn’t the case any longer. Customer service needs to be where customers are.  What that means is that customer service agents today have to be a lot more nimble, they have to be able to speak many different "languages" -  across many different communication channels.   And they have to be proactive. This also means that the training that customer experience agents need to go through isn’t focused  necessarily on how to solve the problem, but also on how to actually manage the customer. Because you’re no longer dealing with the customer in a controlled fashion, you have to be able to adapt to them, adapt to their needs on any channel, but also, you need to be able to balance changing priorities in the market. How to engage millennials at work: motivation and coaching Q: How do you see the entry of millennials into the workforce? A: Millennials are driven by positive reinforcement and a sense of fulfillment. It is a new kind of workforce. They want to be challenged every single day. Historically, customer service agents were given more negative reinforcement.  This isn’t the case with millenials. This means that the role of the manager is less about getting millennials to do work and checking on how they do it. The manager should focus on motivating and coaching. The manager needs to set challenges but also give millennials the tools to be capable to beat them. Another important element is to give millennials a line of sight between what they are doing and what the outcome for the business is - they want to know how their actions impact the world around them. I also believe that organizations expect their workforce to adapt quickly to changes in strategy and customer experience. This means that customer service agents need to have a framework which is enduring but with objectives that can be changed very quickly. So you need a set of rules, a set of mechanisms, a set of tools, which are already familiar to agents, and the ability to turn the dials in a particular direction, to get particular outcomes based on the strategy. Using Gamification as a Dial for Tuning Performance Q: Can you give an example? A: At many customer service operations, like Yahoo! where I worked, the customer service population - the agent population - is largely made of millennials. In our case, they were distributed across nine countries in four continents, and we also needed the ability to simply drive changes in strategy. We needed to find a unifying mechanism by which the agents remain focused on the customer, but also remain focused on helping each other. Gamification played a huge part in this. We wanted to move the agents’ focus away from the day to day mechanics of customer service process, to its actual outcome. We wanted to make sure that our agents had a real line of sight between what they did and the ultimate outcome which was making the customers happy. Gamification was the perfect fit for this, because not only is it very outcome oriented, it also creates a tremendous amount of engagement. Everything that the agents were doing was really part of a game, whether they realized it or not. Every time they answered someone’s question, they got points, every time they got a positive response on a CSAT survey, they got points, when they created content, they got points, when that content was used by the rest of the organization, they got even more points. The point is that each little thing was making customers happy. And when strategies change, we just change the weightings on the games, so the outcome, what you needed to do to win, became different. So the underlying mechanics of what they were doing didn’t change, but what we did was change the outcomes for them. And that allowed us to start navigating through multiple strategies until we were able to settle on what was the best for the company overall. One of the things that we did with gamification is, we didn’t really know the perfect balance between productivity and quality of service, but we kept changing some of the outcomes of the game, first we did it selectively then we did it more universally, so that we could experiment our way to the perfect middle ground. Q: why did you choose gamification at Yahoo!? A:. I had three challenges. First, I had a millennial workforce and I wanted a positive reinforcement mechanism for them. Second, I wanted to create a line of sight between what people did day to day and the real outcome. Third, I wanted to create a much easier way for people to learn, and to adapt to that, and to also collaborate. So when I put all of these things together, and I was looking for a mechanism that I could use that would address these three areas, gamification emerged as an option. Using Gamification to Accelerate Strategic Change Q: Did actually using gamification change your views of the practice? A: When we first started working with gamification, we thought that this would be a cool productivity tool or something to keep agents more engaged. We didn’t realize the flexibility gamification provided us. After a while we wanted to make customer delight a priority. Instead of going through the whole top down strategic change in the organization, we found that all we had to do was just tweak the game a little bit. The outcomes began to change within a couple of weeks. I then understood we had this mechanism to create organizational change across thousands of people, and do so much faster than I had ever seen before. Another important point is that the game itself became the performance management system. So what you did in the game had a direct influence on how our customers felt, had a direct influence on how you thought you were doing as an employee of the company. The outcomes of using Gamification: a Performance Management Culture Q: What were the outcomes of using gamification? A: There were three major outcomes. People were a lot more productive without obsessively worrying about productivity We also experienced better customer interactions that came naturally and weren’t forced. We also saw a deeper outcome, the formation of culture of performance management. To give and receive feedback, you didn’t have to wait for a quarter or year to pass. The game generated feedback every single day, and people knew where they stood relative to everyone else in the organization. Using Gamification Across Several Cultures and Continents Q: What is your experience in using gamification across several countries and continents? A: We launched gamification globally, but the underlying narrative, or the game, that people were playing, was changed based on the region. So for instance, in India we used Cricket as the underlying game that they were playing. In the US we used baseball. These things allowed people to kind of quickly relate to the game but the outcomes were similar across the regions.   Regardless of where people played and what game they played, one thing was common: everyone wanted to win! Q: How do you see gamification 5 or 10 years from now? A: Five or ten years from now, gamification will just become the fabric of what we do. Gamification has existed in small ways before, but now it’s becoming enterprise class and being adopted in the enterprise in a much more enduring way. It is changing the nature of performance management, change how we think about managing people, and how people think about their own performance.

The Problem with Traditional Performance Management (and Traditional Gamification) The Corporate Executive Board published a great piece of research about the Employee Performance Paradox. The paradox is that traditional performance management - we can lump the traditional approach to enterprise gamification here too - is overly focused on individual achievement. The point is that today, individual achievement can only bring about half of the results enterprises need. The rest depends on collaboration, or, as the report says: "The era of the star individual contributor is, in most cases, over. Ten years ago, rulebased and highly linear processes meant that discrete, individual tasks drove business unit revenue and profitability… Fast-forward to today: work has dramatically changed and is becoming increasingly horizontal. Compared to just three years ago, today’s work environment is more interdependent and collaborative. Consequently, the impact of any one individual is masked and even limited by the effectiveness of the broader organization." This, in turns, brings us to the era of the Enterprise Contributor, an employee who doesn’t focus only on their individual achievements but also on how to achieve more with the collaboration of the enterprise around him/her. But what is preventing employees from becoming enterprise contributors? the performance paradox. The Four Performance Paradoxes Any workplace has some inherent tensions that employees and managers have to deal with. We want our employees to strive to excel and outperform their colleagues, many times in exchange for promotions and opportunities, but at the same time we want them to cooperate with their peers. We want to give our employees the freedom to be creative and make decisions, but we still want to have control over what they are working on and what is left off their task list. Withholding the power to decide how to direct the employee, while maintaining her autonomy can be tricky. We also request our employees to be collaborative and to work together with their colleagues. At the same time, it is important to us that work is still done quickly and efficiently. Many times, collaboration means longer processes which come at a cost to the quickness of the processes and the amount of time spent on each task. Finally, one of the most prevalent paradoxes in the workplace is that employees want to be financially compensated for assistance to their colleagues of other showings of heightened motivation, but research shows that financial rewards diminish intrinsic motivation in the long run. Although these problems have existed in work environments for ages, gamification may offer an interesting way to get around these problems, or deal will them in a better fashion. Let’s see how: Paradox 1: Cooperation ↔ Competition The ideal situation regarding this issue is one of "competitive cooperation", where cooperation becomes part of what makes a good employee. This way, employees are encouraged to cooperate and develop an understanding that promotions and opportunities are rewarded in part based also on how much an employee is a team player. In order to do this, organizations can use gamification mechanics such as group leaderboards, where not only individual contributions are taken in to consideration. Gamification can also be used to encourage knowledge collaboration, and to provide recognition for contribution to others. Gamification can be used to encourage team challenges that place a stronger emphasis on collaboration, ignoring gamification’s historical "winner takes all" approach. Paradox 2: Direction ↔ Autonomy One way to keep employees in the direction you want, while still allowing for them to have their fair share of autonomy, is by connecting them to the bigger picture. This is what Vikram Subramaniam, VP Customer Experience at Elance-Odesk-Upwork calls "Line of Sight" "We wanted to move the agents’ focus away from the day to day mechanics of customer service process, to its actual outcome. We wanted to make sure that our agents had a real line of sight between what they did and the ultimate outcome which was making the customers happy." When employees know where the company is headed, it makes it easier for them to make decisions that align with that general direction. Gamification can assist in this by directing employees towards the next tasks on their list, when they have completed the specific task they are working on - this is called next best action. It also communicates enterprise goals extremely well - see some tips for communication through gamification here.  As a new type of performance management tool, gamification ties objectives to performance, in a forward looking way that lets employees adjust their behavior and feel autonomous. Paradox 3: Speed ↔ Collaboration Collaboration is a skill that can be mastered and become much less time costly. As with other skills, this can be taught via gamification mechanics. Employees can learn how to effectively collaborate with one another through coaching and feedback, that can be integrated with gamification. Employees can also learn to evaluate for themselves why the work is slowing down and give solutions for this problem with no need for supervision. Paradox 4: Monetary rewards ↔ Intrinsic motivation Using gamification mechanics, it is possible to offer rewards which aren’t financial, but which still motivate the employee. As I’ve written in the past, the trick is to find goals and objectives which are meaningful to the employee and which are also aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization. These types of rewards can be a sense of accomplishment, a sense of mastery, recognition for a job well done, etc. It is known that intrinsic motivation works better than extrinsic drivers. The paradoxes mentioned here are bound to arise in any workplace. The interesting question is how these tensions are dealt with so that the energy rising from these "workplace paradoxes" can be navigated towards good, productive work. Hopefully I’ve been able to give you some ideas about how to do that here.

Gamification is becoming ubiquitous. It’s used in healthcare apps, social networking sites, and is considered a boon to any eLearning application for any age. It is doing well in the enterprise too; although it has descended from the top of hype cycle (where it was in 2012), demand in 2015 is healthy. Enterprise gamification has come of age. Enterprise gamification - the use of gamification at work, mostly for transactional workers - involves using gamification elements to grow employee engagement, drive the adoption of software and new employee behaviors and improve performance as a result. Whilst originally stamping a badge on top of an "accomplishment" or including a leaderboard was considered enough gamification to qualify, today it doesn’t always pass the mark. Foursquare’s evolution is proof. As the understanding of gamification evolves, the market is looking at more complex gamification implementations, including the use of narratives in gamification. These aren’t done with the goal of complexity per-se, but because there is a widespread recognition that gamification should go beyond simplistic PBL (Points. Badges, Leaderboards) and evolve into science-based program that can create a sustainable and long-term ROI for the business, altering employee behavior by tapping into employees’ motivations and knowledge base. Can’t you just use open source gamification in the enterprise? I see this question often - as in "I would like to add badges to my platform/system/enterprise app". Regardless of the question whether open-source is enterprise-ready or not (some of it is, some isn’t), I think this raises some interesting questions about whether a PBL system, or any system that allows you to stick gamification elements onto an enterprise app, works. This touches both on the practicalities of using gamification in the enterprise and on some must-have features gamification needs. It’s always about several (or many) key performance indicators (and apps), not just one. The essence of gamification is the real-time measurement and feedback of performance. The idea isn’t to measure one simplistic element (such as $$ sales) but many elements that constitute the habits one wants to instill in the workforce. Good employee performance is a function of many factors, such as (in the customer service case) - first call resolution, use of the knowledge based, average handling time and more. Measurement isn’t done for the sake of measurement. It really is used both to state what’s important, to set a transparent and fair metric for performance and for immediate feedback, so employees can correct their course. (it isn’t about competition). We’ve found that the use of open source platforms is sometimes lacking in the ability to track and measure more than very few metrics. Also, keep in mind that many enterprise environments include several systems, whose data should all be integrated into the gamification system. Additionally, good gamification in the enterprise always includes a good dose of learning - if the employee didn’t do well you can always expose him to morsels of learning (micro-learning) - and get better results overall. Design and game rules matter Gamification drives real results, but it needs good game design and the right game rules to be set in advance. Game rules set what can be achieved, whether the drivers are individual achievements or team performance, what learning is required etc. There is no one size fits all; that’s why we deliver our games using our success squad. There is a caveat here too: if game rules provide the wrong incentives, adverse consequences can happen. Gamification needs tuning One of the most interesting things we’ve heard about gamification lately was from the experience of Vikram Subramaniam, who was VP Customer Experience at Yahoo! What he told us was that when implementing gamification he tuned game rules - like dials - to get the right change management results. Open source gamification therefore doesn’t only need to support many metrics and rules; the way these elements interact should be tunable. Analytics and optimization Once game rules are established and the game is launched (we recommend thinking about communicating with employees to increase gamification adoption - see examples here and here) it needs to be optimized. You can’t avoid this step. Whatever game designers had in mind, real time employee behavior is different, and the resulting behavioral results need tuning. Tuning and optimization require analytics. Open Source Gamification - a Conclusion? I’ve listed some of the realities of enterprise gamification. I’m not sure all of them can and do work within the open source context. The main point to take from here is that enterprise gamification is about strategic change and performance management. The question isn’t about the technology that counts achievements and gives points or badges. The question is one of essence.

eLearning and gamification are the perfect match. Not only can gamification greatly support training and on-boarding; it fits any gamification effort from sales to customer service. In fact, we can’t name even one gamification process we’ve deployed where there wasn’t some eLearning seasoning tossed into the mix.  eLearning - using micro-learning nuggets - is the perfect choice for on-the-job training. You can use it to prompt event-based learning and to make sure that employees know about what’s important, and how to do it. This free guide combines the insights from our extensive blogging about elearning and gamification. We hope it presents the readers with a  holistic understanding of the best ways to integrate learning (and learning management systems) into any gamification project: The game elements and game narratives that work well for eLearning gamification How to use event-based eLearning How to grow eLearning program completion and information retention Using micro-learning Integration with learning management systems New hire onboarding; and much more You can download this new guide here.

When I first saw the trailer of the latest animated Disney/Pixar computer-animated fantasy-comedy Inside Out, I knew I had to see it — something about the tagline "we all have little voices in our heads," the question "ever wonder where all those emotions really live?," and the billboard "a major emotion picture’ instead of motion picture. The movie is an incredible portrayal of how our minds work. It shows the great extent to which we are driven by emotions and the peculiarity of the human mind.  Watching his own daughter grow up, Pete Docter (who wrote the script) got the idea to make a movie set in the head of an 11-year-old little girl, Riley Anderson, where five emotions try lead her through her life, as do ours. Getting in Touch with Emotions While a movie can’t incorporate the full gamut of our emotions, "inside-out" made its choices. There’s Joy (a happy little Tinkerbelle-esque character illuminated by an aura of light and always the star), Anger (who literally blows fire out of its head especially at the site of broccoli), Disgust (a green-tinged, teenage-like figure), Fear (a pencil-thin character that passes out at every opportunity), and Sadness (the blue, tear-drop shaped, uber-practical voice that accidentally turns one of Riley’s core happy memories into a sad one getting herself and Joy hurtled out of headquarters). Joy and Sadness  spend the rest of the movie trying to get back to help Riley who is left to her own devices with Anger, Disgust and Fear at the helm. So, basically the movie is a view of the world inside out. Joy has been the strong force through Riley’s early days, but when she is uprooted from her Midwest life because her father starts a new job in San Francisco, things fall apart. As Joy and Sadness try to fix things, the importance of Sadness becomes more evident. The Game Console Riley’s emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside her mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. They are stationed at a type of game console and watch Riley’s world via a big screen. Riley isn’t the only protagonist with her own console - her mother and father have theirs too and the interplay between theirs is often hilarious — picture a group of middle-aged ladies sitting around a console trying to get the attention of the father’s emotions, who run their command ship like army generals and are caught red handed watching a match rather than focusing on the emotional issues at hand, such as Riley’s first day at her new school. The adventures of Joy and Sadness remind us very much of a game, as they navigate millions of Riley’s long-term memories going from Imagination Land, to Dream Productions, to Goofball Island, and more and watch in dismay as many are destroyed before they can get back to headquarters in time to help. Gamification Inside Out Gamification — the use of game mechanics to bring about a certain behavioral change - is about bringing about reactions that can be intensely emotional. Riley’s emotions try things, fail, get up and try again. They learn from their blunders and improve along the way. That’s also a great point about games - where you learn along the way how to master the game rules and constraints. Gamification should work similarly, not punishing blunders and learning. Gamification should also tie into a sense of accomplishment and mastery, as well as the autonomy to act. People need to work with their instincts and their innate drivers. They need to be allowed to make errors and to thrive on the fuzzy good feeling of a job well done. Just like with game mechanics, Joy and Sadness have bite-sized, achievable missions along the way; they have many chances to try again and improve their position; they can go back and fix things to reach their ultimate goal. They also get real-time positive enforcement from each other for one and from their friends still back at headquarters, who are also doing their best to help — and doing one’s best is what gamification strives to let employees focus on. In fact, having the mind as characters instead of the actual person or the brain, is a genius idea for a game itself. The bottom line, and of course one of the movie’s messages is that when you feel good, bad, or sad, "never fear, they’re all in your head!"