Come over and play: gamification in organizations

Most of our lives can be divided into ‘work hours,’ during which we are serious and professional, and ‘free time.’ We are usually less formal and looser during these hours. However, what if our organization offered us some magic and enjoyment as part of work time?

Organizations have begun to recognize that gamification is not child’s play in recent years. It benefits the organization. Among the advantages of implementing gamification in organizational processes are: learning with enjoyment, increasing knowledge sharing in the organization, enhancing camaraderie and collaboration among workers, enhancing values, belonging and connection to the organization, empowering workers by making them the heroes of the game, encouraging ‘out of the box thinking, improving leading and problem-solving skills, and designing a success experience by introducing competitive elements while retaining a sense of success among all participants.

How do you incorporate gamification in an organization? There are infinite ways to gamify most processes in the organization. Gamification can be physical, digital, or hybrid. All we need to do is think in and outside of the game’s box.

Here are a few ways to integrate gamification in Knowledge Management processes:

• Who likes debriefing? While this process is vital to both the organization and its workers, most of us could quickly produce more enjoyable task​, ​gamifying the processcan enhance positive emotions towards it and is an excellent platform for role-playing. For example, we can create an interactive scene of the reviewed case. Thus, we can play detectives, using clues to discover what happened. We can play “Clue” using a fixed database of relevant questions.

• Let us retain knowledge using an insight database: this activity can complement lessons learned processes or stand along. For example, we can design a game that involves finding clues in specific insights, have workers compete in generating correct insights from case descriptions (independent formulation or choosing from a database containing correct and incorrect insights), and many more.

• Changes are challenging, but who does not enjoy a challenging game? Incorporating gamification into change processes can make them more manageable, more pleasant, and more enjoyable experiences. We can design a gamified activity (for example, “Who Moved My Cheese?”) to infuse the process with humor and lightness. This will make the difficulties of change an exciting adventure.

• Special events: it is highly advisable to create gamified activities revolving around special events in the organization, such as team building days or professional conventions, and incorporate content and value with the enjoyment. You can create game templates that suit workshops or professional conventions on themes such as creativity, innovation, and thinking outside the box.

Those are just some suggestions. This is where we need to express our creativity while remembering that gamification must suit the organization’s needs and resources. Our activities can be complex and intricate, but simple actions may be more effective if we remain focused on the value we wish to generate. To do this, we must not forget the three basic rules of gamification: fun, fun, and fun.