Why gamification of the workplace helps
It’s 2017 and millennials are making up over half of the workspace and dominating offices across the world
Bang. the once quiet office is suddenly startled and everyone looks around to see what all the fuss is about. Turns out that one of the new guys has just slammed the manager’s door and is now storming off carrying nothing, but a messenger bag around his shoulder and a laptop in his hand. This office isn’t a typical one where when someone quits you see them vacate the premises with tears in their eyes and a cardboard box of their belongings in their arms. Because they don’t have any.
The new generation of employees don’t need much but their laptop and ideas because this is the time of the millennials. These are the keyboard warriors of the 21st century and there’s a new way of working that needs to be accustomed to.
It’s 2017 and millennials are making up over half of the workspace and dominating offices across the world. This is a trend even more evident and promising in the UAE, a country where millennials have become a priority for HR departments to manage. The Internet is overflowing with articles and research about the behavior of these young and inspiring personnel.
In fact, the gaming aspect of these younger generations has been finding its place in the work atmosphere and now businesses are implementing a way to gamify systems and processes to enhance the performance and engagement levels of staff members.
Millennials have grown up with all kinds of technology, which makes their working style wildly different from the generation that preceded them. Computers have played a major role in the reshaping of the workplace and the millennial employee is at the forefront and is the pinnacle of this change.
Due to the fact that technology is being pushed to the forefront and driving this type of culture, it offers businesses an opportunity to use gamification as a way to increase employee engagement and performance levels. It’s the way of adding game-like features into business scenarios that may trigger the same stimulus that has helped online games achieve such a tremendous success with this generation. Gamification has even had a major impact on learning and for this reason Dubai will launch the “world’s first university to introduce gamification in learning where students earn points by accomplishing ‘enjoyable’ activities.”
Innovations in the learning environment can also be transferred to the working environment. Author of Loyalty 3.0, Rajat Paharia, said that game designers have had the knowledge of using data to incentivize players to perform better since 1971 when Atari’s arcade videogame, Pong, was created.
Gamification has been a way to re-engineer the business’ processes in a manner that allows for individuals and teams to continuously monitor their performance and frequently reward achievements. This is a way for companies to take the leap that consultants have been urging businesses to adopt. Corporations are beginning to take cues from video games by adding scoring, virtual badges, or other game-like elements to everyday work processes in order to make the job more fun and rewarding.
Gamification in the workplace has be globally accepted due to a majority of employees regarding it as a more incentivizing way to work rather than the simple and “boring” KPI orientated past. Research has shown that the new concept is beginning to take pace and show almost immediate signs of achievement and progress in employees.
Feedback showed that satisfying these intrinsic motivators could make the workplace more appealing to millennials and result in increased employee engagement levels as well as higher retention rates. Due to this fact, millennials see the Middle Eastern region and the UAE specifically as a place to settle down in their career of choice. Dubai remains among the top three destinations of choice for millennials to work alongside London and New York. Research done exclusively by UBS, a Swiss banking and financial services group, showed that more than half of the top-earning millennials in the UAE never expect to retire, showing their dedication and high retention rate.
With gamification implemented into several workplaces, this number is expected to increase within the coming years, not just in the UAE but globally.
For example, in the USA, Target has been able to gamify the checkout process for cashiers to receive a score based on the optimum time for each item they scan, improving wait times at the cash register for customers and motivating the employees behind the counter.
The future of the professional workplace is rapidly changing and gamification is one the many new concepts that businesses should adopt in order to continuously grow the millennial workforce.