Gamification in HR is taking centre stage these days, with the industry opting for new ways to imply game-based motivation programs for better employee engagement and enhanced productivity.

Badgeville, the global leader in business gamification, released the results of an independent survey of over 500 business workers, ranging from entry-level employees to C-level executives, to prove the mass-adoption and success of gamification in the HR industry.

The results were staggering—78% of workers are utilizing games-based motivation at work and nearly all (91%) say these systems improve their work experience by increasing engagement, awareness and productivity.

Game-based motivation programs now enacted at workplaces include competitions, goal-setting, performance rewards, success statistics and status recognition.

This improves the work experience of nearly all the employees who use it, with 95 percent success rate recorded. Gamification increases the productivity levels for 90% of workers and increases awareness of co-workers’ goals and tasks for 86%.

The top benefits of gamification are an increased desire to work and stay engaged on job (30 percent), inspiration to be more productive on job (27 percent) and it helps stay focused on a task by reducing distractions (20 percent).

“Employees, especially across younger generations, become disengaged easily, causing low productivity and retention levels. Our research shows that game-based motivation can be a powerful solution for today’s top workforce challenges,” says Jon Shalowitz, CEO of Badgeville.

“C-level executives and managers at high-performance companies are realizing that the challenge to drive employee engagement and motivation is increasing year after year.”

See: Gamification in HR: The Next Trendsetter

In addition to increasing productivity and engagement for employees at work, game-based motivation has proven successful at motivating employees. The survey revealed that only 31 percent of employees are most motivated by monetary awards or increased salary.

The other 69 percent of employees are motivated more by performing well, feeling personal job satisfaction, receiving recognition on the job, gaining the support of their colleagues and having advanced learning opportunities.

“Organizations who want to retain top talent while keeping employees working hard should look beyond salary and monetary bonuses,” said Shalowitz. “It’s a wise long-term investment to create an environment where employees can manage, visualize and digitally share their performance, achievements and skills.”

Not surprisingly, younger generations have greater expectations for their workplaces to utilize gamification as a motivational solution. In fact, nearly three-fourths of survey respondents aged 22-35 years say gamification should be expected in a modern organization, whereas a little over half of respondents aged 36-55 years share the same outlook. Yet across all generations, 72 percent believe that putting gamification solutions in place would inspire them to work harder.

Earlier this year, Badgeville released new analytics for enterprise gamification programs. By adding gamification to a wide-range of enterprise applications including social communities, sales performance, learning management and customer support, Badgeville Analytics can track, analyse, report on and evolve these enterprise programs.

This new generation product is designed to provide big data analytics with ease of interpretation by putting the tools of data scientists into the hands of gamification program managers.

Companies and employers can see what’s working to motivate employee actions and make real-time enhancements to their gamification programs. Any gamified action can be tracked across any time period.

Image credit: badgeville.com

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