Rewards & Gamification: New Frontier or Next Big Fad?

It was not so very long ago that the notion of playing games at work conjured up images of colleagues sneaking in a hand of Solitaire during a slow moment.  Now gamification, the use of game mechanics to make non-game activities and environments more engaging and fun, is invading organizational life on a number of fronts.  And it's going to be big.  How big? A much-quoted Gartner report on the topic predicts that by 2014, "a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application."

In the realm of HR and gaming, Marriott has recently made news with its launch of a game - My Marriott Hotel - to drive employment branding and support its recruiting efforts.  Learning and development is another area presenting a fertile field for gaming applications.

What about rewards?

Gamification offers a potential means to draw in employees and engage them in a reward program.  To get some idea of the ways this might work, consider what Gartner identifies as the four primary ways that gamification drives engagement:

1. Accelerated feedback cycles.In the real world, feedback loops are slow (e.g., annual performance appraisals) with long periods between milestones. Gamification increases the velocity of feedback loops to maintain engagement.

2. Clear goals and rules of play. In the real world, where goals are fuzzy and rules selectively applied, gamification provides clear goals and well-defined rules of play to ensure players feel empowered to achieve goals.

3. A compelling narrative. While real-world activities are rarely compelling, gamification builds a narrative that engages players to participate and achieve the goals of the activity.

4. Tasks that are challenging but achievable. While there is no shortage of challenges in the real world, they tend to be large and long-term. Gamification provides many short-term, achievable goals to maintain engagement.

So, the potential is there.  But the same rules about smart reward plan design still apply - groovy mechanics aside.  Catchy tools are no substitute for clear-eyed discovery and problem definition.  In his article on the topic, one of my favorite sages, John Sumser, shares his worry about our ability to stay grounded in rigorous process and sound practice in the face of this new trend.

You can bet that gamification is going to figure prominently in the misguided attempts to automate stakeholder commitment.

Instead of wondering why we ask employees to do stupid things, we are about to be deluged with gimmicks that try to motivate with fake money, fake status and fake accomplishment.

What's your take?  Can we - will we - use gamification to help connect people in thoughtful and authentic ways to our biggest performance challenges, and to support our sharing the rewards of that collaborative success?  Or will we fall into the trap of simply grabbing the next shiny gold ring?

Game on?

Ann Bares is the Founder and Editor of the Compensation Café,  Author of Compensation Force and Managing Partner of Altura Consulting Group LLC, where she provides compensation consulting services to a wide range of client organizations.  She earned her M.B.A. at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and is a bookhound and aspiring cook in her spare time.  Follow her on Twitter at @annbares.

Creative Commons image "xbox-pad-for-windows-05" by Futurilla

Comments

[Todd Noebel]

There is something about the whole "gamification" thing that keeps inserting itself into my thoughts on the topic. Isn't this really all about simulations moving from pen and paper to screen and interface?

Yes, it has the potential to deliver faster feedback (as do many things that go from analogue to digital). But at its core, it strikes me that it's all about the "what if" and the "if...then" mazes we ask people to navigate.

If you intend to use this shiny new tool you'd better be crystal clear on the "why" and it better be compelling to your "gamers".

[Ann Bares]

Todd:

Good summary and thoughts, and I couldn't agree more. The criteria for adopting any shiny new tool should be clarity on the "why" and fit to your business and people.

Thanks for weighing in!

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

With all due respect, I rather disagree with the rationalizations presented for gamification. Like so many other presentations these days, the logic is faulty. The article employs false and exaggerated comparisons. It depends heavily on “straw man” arguments, in which the very best is compared to the very worse in order to dramatize the supposed advantage of a concept that is implied to be “innovative” while really remaining very traditional. Read through the justifications and you will see that every evil of “the real world” to be corrected is simply the result of bad behavioral process, while each “superior outcome” attributed to the game is simply the normal product of good behavioral practice. All the methods of “the real world” are reduced to the bad practices alone and every effective technique is reserved to the game format. It’s merely by a basic substitution of good process for bad process.

The “good game” must meet all the same requirements of a “good reward system.” Games can be just as bad as this awful “real world” that was described. And the real world can operate as well as the idealized game. Heck, the entire “gamification” model is only a superficial shell that applies the lessons of every good performance/incentive system, in disguise. If you have a well developed understanding of reward tradecraft, you won’t need gamification to teach you. On the other hand, this back-door model of conventional effective reward techniques and consequence implications might educate some people who do not yet understand those things.

It is a lot like the “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” show. If you ARE, you don’t need the show. If you are NOT, you need to realize your shortcomings so you can remedy them. Considering what it takes to get the attention of people today, gamification may become necessary to trick folks into learning as a form of entertainment. Sad to say, it may be required if management suffers from the same myopia as the employees: i.e., they all see knowledge as hard work rather than fun and feel that education must be disguised as frolic before it becomes attractive. Too bad, if that is true.

As you observe, smart reward plan design renders gamification redundant and unnecessary. But we live in a world where a shiny flashy tech solution is usually preferred over plain substance.

[Ann Bares]

Jim:

Interesting observations, as always. Thanks for sharing them!