Enterprise Gamification

One of the final sections of my Gamification course through UPenn touched upon the uses of gamification within enterprise. My professor gave us a list of six areas where there are internal enterprise applications for such thinking: (1) intranet engagement, (2) productivity enhancement, (3) efficiency enhancement, (4) knowledge management, (5) human resources, and (6) innovation.

Intranet engagement refers to having leaderboards present to identify and highlight experts in certain areas.  This particular type of gamification can be found on the SAP intranet to make it easier to find an expert when help is needed.  Productivity enhancement, a more popular use of gamification, aims to help or encourage employees to do their jobs better.  Within this area, it is important to pay attention to what type of employee you are motivating.  An analyst will be motivated differently than a salesperson.  Leaderboards can sometimes be helpful in allowing employees to see where they are at in comparison to others, but there is a potential danger in these tools.  If not applied appropriately, something like this could be used for oppression of employees through constant monitoring.  One such negative example can be found at Disneyland of all places.  A Los Angeles Times article from 2011 exposed the company for having a giant TV screen 'leaderboard' for their hotel laundry employees.  Instead of motivating the employees to want to succeed and increase their scores, employees called this TV the 'electronic whip' and were known to skip bathroom breaks for fear of falling behind.  If you aren't careful in how productivity enhancement gamification techniques are applied, this sort of sad effect can be seen.

Efficiency enhancement is somewhat similar to productivity.  Productivity refers to the core job activities, while efficiency is all on an employee's activities overall.  In class, email was discussed as something that is a potential 'waste' of time in the work day, as it takes the employee away from their 'real' work.  One company had developed a game of sorts in which employees got points for answering their emails and also for handling them in a concise manner.

An example of knowledge enhancement comes from Deloitte.  They have a program called 'WhoWhatWhere' in which employees are encouraged to get to know their fellow employees.  Upon sign-in, employees are prompted with a photo of another employee and a fill-in-the-blank question "This employee's name is....."  If this employee knows this individual, they choose the right name and are congratulated on being connected.  If they don't, they are told the correct answer and sent that employee's contact information so that they can potentially connect with them in the future.

Human resources is probably the most common place that gamification is seen, as the areas that they cover are often spaces where 'fun' is not used to describe them.  Areas such as onboarding, corporate training, and performance reviews are a few examples of where companies attempt to weave in gamification to make them more enjoyable, or at least not something that employees dread.

Lastly, for innovation, providing a place where ideas can flow can be game-like within companies.  One example from the department of work and pensions was called "Idea Street".  This was basically a virtual stock market where employees could propose their own ideas as well as 'buy stock' in their fellow employees' ideas.  In effect, the most popular ideas float to the top and the company can investigate putting those into action.

When you think about motivation in the workplace, it's important to remember the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards.  Things like salary, bonuses, stock options, praise, promotions and responsibility are all extrinsic rewards that are associated with work.  So how can gamification capitalize on things that might be closer to being intrisic rewards at work?

Skill development, corporate citizenship and fun are a few avenues that are ripe for gamification.  Skill development, often called professional development, is when you can learn about problem solving and engage the parts of your brain that like to learn new things.  While you might gain competitive advantages through aquiring new skills (more extrinsic thinking), you may also really enjoy learning and therefore benefit intrinsically too.  Corporate citizenship refers to things that are done partially for the good of the company.  The Microsoft language quality game that I mentioned in a previous blog post is one example of how individuals can be motivated to help the company through gamification.  Lastly, fun.  Sometimes making something fun is all it takes to get people to engage in an activity. 

The danger I mentioned earlier in this post about Disneyland pops up when gamification is not voluntary.  When individuals are entered into a leaderboard such as the laundry workers were, the gamification can backfire and cause the 'players' to feel trapped instead of motivated.  Another example comes from Target.  Individuals who work at the check-out at Target are all involuntarily monitored and shown how they are doing as they are working.  They recieve a letter score for each item scanned, based on time - G for green, Y for yellow and R for red.  They are then told what percentage of their transactions are each color.  This has no meaning or fun for the employee and is instead just a way for employers to monitor their employees.  These instances represent failed applications of gamifaction techniques.

How exactly do you know when gamification is voluntary?  The players have to consent through three elements: (1) they understand the rules, (2) they think the game is fair and (3) they want to pay attention to the game.  If these three are present, it is much more likely that gamification will have a net positive effect on motivation and behavior.

-Vicky