Gamification – The Novel Way to Improve Team Spirit!

Incorporating gamification programs in the company offers myriad benefits. More and more companies are making it a part of their business strategies and employee skill-enhancement techniques to boost productivity and bring competitiveness to the table.

How does gamification help? Well, the answer to this is simple. It improves productivity, enhances creativity, increases motivation, increases engagement, and helps develop certain skills.

What is Gamification and How Does it Help?

Gamification is the use of game design and concepts in non-gaming scenarios. Research suggests that it helps boost numerous skills, including problem-solving. Besides that, gamification of training and development programs in an organizational setup will also boost the employee’s communication, negotiation, leadership, and motor skills. Research suggests that it is a great way for a person to learn stress management too.

In short, it can help employees reach numerous key training goals with ease. As they hone their skills through play, the retention of skills is also higher, and one might notice a quick change in behavior adaption.

The Popular Games

While the organizations are free to experiment with the games they would like to introduce in their training programs, certain games are immensely popular globally. Most of these games emphasize the participants working as a team to solve problems, arrive at a solution, and build rapport. One such popular concept is the Escape Room.

In this simulation game, the participants are locked up in a room with clues that they need to unravel as a team and find their way out. Besides boosting team participation, the game also encourages the participants to use their logical thinking, problem-solving, and comprehending abilities. Another popular game is Outbreak – Escape the Virus. This game enables the participants to slay a novel virus out to annihilate the world.

The technology-infused techniques include room-style puzzles that juxtapose motivation, full immersion, motivation, inclusion, and cumulative learning experience. In short, if you want to increase the effectiveness of team-building, make gamification the part of the whole!

Technology to the Rescue

Numerous apps come to your aid with planning and executing perfect team-building tasks. You can substitute the traditional pen and paper with these apps and enhance the participant engagement levels. Smartphones, tablets, GPS systems, etc., now play a key role in team-building activities. 2019 saw interesting collaborative VR games such as the Infinite Loop or activities that included high-tech gadgets such as Red Alert’s customized puzzle crates.

Using these apps, the human resources team can build numerous activities that bring out the employee’s skills. By bringing out real-life scenarios to life through stimulation, you can test the cooperation, coordination, incorporation of ideas in a team with ease. These games are perfect for recognizing project leaders, supervisors, and managers.

Gamify Everyday Tasks

Ever wondered why we remember our numbers and alphabets so well? The reason is simple, beyond the fact that we rehearse them so often, there was a great learning technique that our teachers imbibed in it. We learned them by incorporating rhyming words, fun games, puzzles, etc. This means only one thing. Gamification is useful not just for learning but also for making mundane tasks fun. You could incorporate this into your workplace too. All you need to do is come up with a fun way to make boring chores engaging.

For instance, you could make your meeting rooms more vibrant, start it with a quick game, have play hours every day, and so on. For example, most employees feel sleepy an hour after the lunch break. You could use this time for a quick engagement task. Play some music and ask the employees to freeze and hold their posture until the music stops. The one who moves loses, and so on. You would give your employees a reason to stay motivated to give their best at work!

Need a quick fix to incorporate gamification initiatives at your workplace? Here’s what you could do:

1. Identify the team’s common goals, the challenges they face, and build a plan of action around it.
2. Come up with cool names, a back story, and some motivation tips.
3. Pick games you played as a child to make it fun and relatable to everyone.
4. Announce winners and encourage participation.

Motivation acts as a big force urging employees to work towards a common goal. It gives them recognition, rewards, and instills a sense of competition to work harder and do better. Gamification works at a core level to keep employees engaged. This amalgamation of technology and product works well in the non-gaming context. It just goes to show that gamification will be the future of the workplace and the education and health sector too! What can we say?  But, let the “game-i-fication “begin!