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Using Gamification to Actively Engage Employees and Increase Profitability

Have you ever passed an employee doing their job and was not completely satisfied with their performance? At that moment many of us might think how nice it would be to have the time to tutor our employees on a regular basis. Yet, with so much on our plates there is barely time to get everything done – let alone teach others about our culture, customer service, compliance and even what is happening on our floor, so they can be of greater value to our guests.

Yet, we all know the consequences we might face with a single negative interaction with a front-line employee and a guest. These instances occur more frequently that we care to think about. And we know that those instances can have major ramifications to our P&L, so creating deeper levels of engaging education across your entire team becomes mission critical.

Welcome to one of the more prevalent challenges we all face on a daily basis. Don’t worry, your not alone and yes, there is a solution.

Let’s take a look at this national crisis.

According to the 2017 Gallop “State of the American Workplace”, only 33% of Americans are engaged at work, while a staggering 51% are not. Even worse, 16% of workers are actively disengaged, which means that these employees are actually undermining organizations from within.

This “disengagement epidemic” directly contributes to the loss of $370 billion in combined US company annual profits. At the same time, companies are spending $22.9 billion in non-cash rewards (Incentive Foundation) and another $70.6 billion on training expenditures (Training Magazine).

So why are companies “investing” almost $100 BILLION every year to increase true employee engagement, even though they are only achieving 33% engagement levels? It becomes evident when you look at the stats below of employees that are actively engaged:

• 41% LOWER Absenteeism
• 59% LOWER Turnover
• 17% HIGHER Productivity
• 20% HIGHER Sales
• 70% FEWER Safety Incidents
• 40% FEWER Quality Defects
• 21% HIGHER Profitability

As Gallup sums up, “Simply put, engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees – across industry, company size and nationality, and in good economic times and bad.”

Now that we’ve firmly established the why you need improved employee engagement, let’s look at the how.

Using Gamification to Actively Engage Your Employees

It easy to see why over 40% of Global 1000 companies have embraced gamification over less productive, “boring” programs. Gamification is proven to increase consistent employee engagement and produce a direct uplift to their bottom line. And it works for every demographic – both old and young. And when we talk about gamified marketing its not just a single game but a fully integrated learning  platform where employees can log in online, visit and participate on a daily basis and see an ongoing record of their performance.

Let’s look at the basics. As an employee do you really want to relive your school days by having to complete a reading assignment? And even if you had an employee that did take the time to read your employee handbook, newsletters or intranet, do you ask each of them to give a book report to see if they really understood the material?

So, is gamification the answer? It most certainly can be. A properly structured gamified edutainment program (educating in an entertaining way) provides your employees with a fun and rewarding way to learn. Remember the star your got on your grammar school papers? Although our approach is much more sophisticated, it really is built on that same foundation that provides instant feedback, gratification and rewards.

This is how it can be structured. First, we work with our clients to produce short videos or engaging content featuring any number of people, topics and departments. Don’t get overwhelmed and worry. You don’t have to any acting experience or be a polished writer. It’s actually very easy to do with our We Design, You Approve, We Deploy approach that, with your direction, produces most of the content needed and guides you thru the process. These videos or brief “helpful hints” could feature any number of topics including:

• Corporate/Tribal History & Culture
• Key Employee Recognition
• Employee Wellness
• Business Agenda & Major Announcements
• Infrastructure Changes
• Customer Service Requirements and Improvement Tips
• HR and other Compliance, including Onboarding
• Community Relations

Then the rewarding fun begins with our many “earn and reward” activities including

• Photo recall
• Crossword puzzles
• Quizzes
• Trivia and fun facts
• Memory Match
• Word Search and many others

These activities “test” your employees knowledge and understanding of the curriculum. We even have one client who is considering making participation and scoring at a certain level part of each employee’s review.

Why is this process being embraces by so many corporations around the world? It starts with incentive psychology, as employees are rewarded for their participation in real-time through leveling up, leaderboards and badges. Other rewards are only limited by the imagination—such as community partner discounts, special events with the GM and extra premium items from property promotions. It’s simple – the more they participate, the more they “earn” and are rewarded. This approach, provides numerous benefits which are so critical with the modern workforce such as instant feedback, recognition and gratification that are a “badge of honor” shared proudly with family and friends.

You can even extend it to the floor where “Way to go” recognition codes can be given out by managers to deserving employees. The employee then enters the code into our  platform and is provided a special reward. We can even incorporate an “Employee Spotlight” section to highlight above and beyond performances. These are just a few of the many elements that can be included in a full gamified platform.

When you seriously consider the tangible bottom-line results that are to be gained, it’s now incumbent upon our industry to embrace this “engagement through gamification” methodology like over 400 industry-leading companies have.