While a cursory understanding of the process itself often brings a rolling of eyes and possibly a smirk of condescension from managers, departmental to board level, the concept of gamification is actually quite a valuable tool when it comes to engaging employees in meeting company expectations and goals. Here are five, fun ways that gamification can improve the overall quality of your company workforce:
1. Widens the Talent Pool
Every HCM team faces a formidable challenge in finding and landing the best possible candidates for their company – especially when the business climate is booming. While it is the HR team’s mission to find new talent, using gamification to incentivize the rest of your staff to take a more active role in that acquisition can pay enormous dividends. By simply providing a “Referrer of the Year” award with a somewhat substantial prize, you will embolden and empower your entire team to find top talent. In addition, not only do the top “recruiters” gain – both personally and professionally – but the HR team feels a little less pressure which lets them concentrate on some of their other duties.
2. Improves the Onboarding Process
Turning the hiring, onboarding and training process into a gamified experience – by rewarding the hirees with both acknowledgement and tangible bonuses – has proven to be one of the most effective ways to encourage employees to complete each step of the journey in a timely and complete manner. Similarly, providing rewards for self-motivation not only brings out that characteristic in your hirees but also relieves your location managers of some of the oversight duties necessary for proper orientation and training. Simply put, it is a win-win situation where both the trainees and the trainers benefit. It also gives you, the executive, an opportunity to meet-and-greet the new employees on a totally positive level if you choose to award the prizes.
3. Enhances the Training Process
It is a sad fact in most companies that compliance training – whether it involves something technical like a unified communications initiative or more HR-oriented items like diversity and harassment – is seldom met with much enthusiasm by the participants. Still, it is necessary to engage the employees, communicate the information and get their “buy-in.” Nothing accomplishes this task faster and more efficiently than a solidly-planned, online-learning gamification program. In short, gamification encourages action on the part of the participants whether it is for personal gain or simply for the satisfaction of outdoing their coworkers. In either case, the training is made a priority.
4. Provides the Roadmap to Promotion
In general, the most ambitious people in your organization are also the most motivated and truly the best employees. In addition, they serve as a beacon of success for the rest of your team. While the most talented of your employees may innately understand what it takes to succeed and progress up the corporate ladder, the others may not be so well-served. For this reason, the use of gamification to create mission-based career paths will allow anyone with enough motivation to “level up” in the organization. Once again, the data for these processes is eminently trackable and provides an excellent resource for managers looking to promote someone from within. In the end, your company ends up with a more productive, collaborative and upwardly motivated workforce.
5. Retains Top Talent
Once you have developed a superior team, it only seems rational to strive to keep them happy and from moving to the competition. Significant engagement of these people is integral to maintaining your company’s base of institutional knowledge, a sense of consistency throughout the organization and, most importantly, avoiding the costs and aggravation of a high turnover rate. Your best talent is also the most lucratively rewarded in a tangible sense, so gamification in this case provides them an outlet for their advice. Look to these folks for recommendations on process improvement, product enhancement and departmental collaborative efforts. Then recognize and duly reward the best of the best for their efforts.
A Final Thought
One of the best aspects of gamification is that it can be implemented and run on an HRIS system with a minimum of interaction needed from the HCM team. The key is to track the opportunities and activities and then reward employee participation. The rewards provide an intrinsic motivation and the tracking mechanism provides valuable insight into who is really a team player – invaluable information when it comes to considering assignments, promotions and more tangible rewards like raises and bonuses.
For more information on the benefits of HRIS as it pertains to gamification and employee engagement in your organization as well as other HRIS solutions for your company, please visit us online at compareHRIS.com.