What is Gamification & How It Will Help Organization to Improve Productivity

Where the whole industry is getting gaga over Gamification and its applications. There are people who are making a mistake by considering gamification as a game. It’s not a usual game, but an application which resolves the problem of productivity and effectiveness. According to Gartner report, they predict that by the end of 2014, over 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one 'gamified' application. And during 2012 only about 20% of Global 2000 companies have deployed a gamified application. So, the question arise why all the sudden multinational companies and organizations are so eager to gamify?

To understand that, first let’s understand what Gamification is

Who doesn’t like to play games? And what if you can merge the production and efficiency of your organization with the gaming. Sounds interesting, isn’t it! So if we want to define it in some technical jargons then according to Forrester, Gamification is the insertion of game dynamics and mechanics into non-game activities to drive a desired behavior. Although gamification, as the name suggests, was evolved out of the world of video games, where they have mastered the art of data-driven motivation.

However, when these game applications are implied over organizations for better productivity and to make the organizations task seamless, it shows it actual strength. In other words any use of gaming elements which are used for organizing systems with a pre-defined rules to play, leaderboards, and other methods for awarding rewards, when all this are applied in non-game contexts that is considered to be gamification.

Now the next important question, why you need Gamification?

The current workforce was born with the videogames. This is a generation who grew up playing interactive games, it is a generation which is known as Millennials. According to research from Nielsen, 68% of Millennials own a gaming console, 76% own smartphones and 73% own a laptop, so it's a generation which is comfortable with games, interactivity and technology.

So the need for gamification is simple, it helps in striving the desired goals e.g. achieving the targets for sales and deals. Gamification motivates the employee to achieve the target in the best possible manner. According to Aberdeen Group, Gamifcation authenticates how top-performing organizations take a ‘thoughtful or simple’ path to manage their sales teams, who then respond positively with better revenue, quota, and profitability results.

If we talk about its principles, it got 4 principles which means of driving engagement using gamification techniques –

• Accelerated Feedback Cycles: Gamification increases the speed of feedback loops to maintain the engagement.

• Clear Goals and Rules to Play: Gamification provides clear goal and its well defined rules to play it. And it also ensures that players feel empowered to achieve these goals.

• A compelling Story: Gamification builds a story that engages players to participate and achieve the goals of the activity.

• Tasks are need to be challenging but achievable at the same time: Goals should be well defined. The curriculum should provide many short terms, achievable goals to maintain engagement.

Below are the Top 5 gamification apps that you can try your hands on –

• Epicwin ($2.99) – It mainly focuses on task management by bestowing you with an RPG character to represent your progress.

• GetGlue (Free) – It shares what you’re currently reading, watching and listening to with GetGlue’s social network, and get rewarded with free stickers and discounts.

• Mint.com Personal Finance (Free) – It is mainly used for financial accounts in progress bars and checklists, the app’s function is to combine all your financial information into one place to help you track, budget and manage your money.

• DueProps (Free) – It’s an employee-appreciation game designed to recognize everyday work efforts, DueProps deploys gamification to incentivize and reward co-workers. Its helps in increasing productivity and raise morale around the office.

• WiseStep (Free) – It is a social network that lets you earn points and rewards for referring your friends to new jobs. Members earn points for inviting friends, colleagues and classmates to the website, and referral rewards etc.

At the end, it can be concluded that every company has its own demands and mission. It is important to understand the need first of all and how it can be benefited. Running blindly is not a solution. So, if you are an organization looking for gamification app as an alternate solution which can resolve the purpose of company, surely you should go for it otherwise it would be like making fool of yourself in this competitive world.

(Omnie Solutions is an enterprise application development company providing custom web and enterprise mobile application development services to global business. Omnie Solutions has extensive experience and expertise in custom application development for various industries. Follow Omnie Solutions on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.)