What do you achieve with an engaged workforce? According to a recent Gallup poll, an organization with engaged workforce leads to:

• 17% higher productivity
• 20% higher sales

To add to this, there 2013 poll found companies with high levels of engagement had:

• 37% fewer absenteeism
• 25-65% less turnover

What all this means is that having an engaged workforce can and will substantially enhance your company’s business performance. Alright, so you agree to this, however, the challenging question that most organizations ask themselves is, how do we engage our workforce? Drumroll please … Gamification!

Gamification is Everywhere

Yes, gamification is everywhere. It’s an increasingly growing trend that’s fast gaining adoption in the world of healthcare, marketing, customer relations and HR, among others.

For companies seeking to boost employee engagement, gamification creates a digital environment that helps employees achieve specific goals and objectives. Through the games that employees play they earn points, badges and rewards and progress through the gamified world by improving their skills, collaborating and meeting company and team goals. Simply put, gamification brings back the fun in work!

Let’s face it, everyone loves games and play it in some form or the other. Gamification, hence, is a natural fit in the workplace. Think about it, wouldn’t it be amazing to boost your employee engagement levels through games?

Why Gamification Exceeds Expectations

At first people are skeptical about introducing ‘games’ into the workplace. I can understand the hesitation with having employees play mindless games just for fun. However, the idea behind gamification is to apply game mechanics to work. So essentially, they still are working, not really just playing games. Gamification can help companies:

• Effectively communicate company values, goals and objectives.
• Align its talent to its vision and purpose.
• Reach a wider audience – basically the entire population of the company.
• Boost healthy competition to stimulate performance.
• Enhance team and cross-functional collaboration.
• Significantly reduce the costs of rewards, when compared to physical rewards and motivators.

Gamification also has the ability to impart new skills to its users. Companies can encourage acceptable behaviors and really test their employees’ problem solving and cognitive abilities as well. And with the instantaneous feedback employees receive motivation can be significantly enhanced and morale boosted.

Sure, gamification can do all this, but how? What really makes it so impactful and consistently able to engage employees is its ability to challenge its users. With traditional reward systems people get used to the same reward and hence, react in the same way. Overtime, their behavior and reactions are habitually driven because their brain has adjusted to the same reward. The challenge, novelty and excitement ends for these employees.

Gamification makes learning, engagement and achieving goals fun, exciting and challenging at all stages. As gamers (employees) progress through levels, their skills, power and status enhance. Hence, their brain is continuously being reactivated to ‘think’ and be challenged. The attainment of rewards, hence, becomes much more anticipated and fulfilling.

An engaged workforce will not only stick around with your company longer, they’ll be much more productive and give it their absolute best more often. If you’re serious about enhance employee engagement take a closer look at games and gamify your workplace!

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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.