Gamification in the Workplace: How and Why Businesses Are Turning Mundane Tasks Into Friendly Competitions
Gamification in the workplace can create opportunities for learning and greater employee engagement. Employing best practices is critical to driving good business outcomes.
Imagine a workplace where tasks are transformed into engaging challenges, and employee achievements are celebrated with the excitement of winning a game. Welcome to the era of gamification in the workplace, where traditional routines are infused with game-like elements to boost motivation, enhance productivity, and foster a more dynamic work environment.
Gamification in the workplace is becoming more sophisticated, and HR leaders are finding new ways to gamify critical employee touchpoints. With employee engagement hitting an 11-year low in 2024, leaders in the workplace are seeking new ways to create excitement and add layers of fun to routine tasks.
To learn more about effective HR gamification, we spoke with Kristi Larson, manager and innovation specialist for the Center of Excellence of Design at ADP, who is also completing a Ph.D. in learning technologies.
Understand gamification and its benefits
Gamification refers to a game with a purpose that goes beyond entertainment, Larson says. As she wrote in an article for the journal Organizational Training and Performance, gamification is "leveraging the psychological predisposition to engage in gaming, using mechanisms that game designers have applied in making video games, as a potential means to make real-world activities more engaging."
Strategic gamification offers benefits such as:
Increasing motivation and engagement
Enhancing productivity through positive competition or collaboration
Improved retention
Engaged program adoption
Greater willingness to try new things, risk failure, and tackle repetitive tasks
When delivered well, gamification can have a transformative impact on the workplace.
Learn about gamification's coming of age
If the first thing that comes to mind when you think of gamification is a clunky multiple-choice quiz, you're not alone. However, today's gamification in the workplace is much more sophisticated. Larson explains that companies are taking advantage of AI and low-code tools to create immersive and engaging experiences across the organization.
From virtual escape rooms to gamification exercises that help identify candidate strengths in recruiting, there are significant opportunities for greater creativity and engagement. The success of a gamified activity depends on a clear understanding of the business benefits and ties that back to how employees learn and improve performance through gamified learning pathways.
Embrace a culture of gamification
For leaders wondering if gamification in the workforce is the right fit to drive successful business incomes, it's really driven more by the culture of a company than the content, Larson says.
Successfully adopting gamification involves creating a space where being playful and taking risks is encouraged. Consider whether your culture is as welcoming to gamification as it could be and what steps can be taken to help improve that culture. For example, are senior leaders participating in gamification activities and congratulating employees doing well and finding opportunities for recognition? If not, consider how to move the needle on that and encourage executive support.
Design games that challenge employees
Effective gamification is about more than just putting a gaming wrapper around a quiz. Instead, Larson says, it's important to find ways to challenge employees through best-practices-driven design.
One example Larson cites is an "escape the training" opportunity at the end of an ADP training, where the more proficient you are, the faster you can be done.
"The goal is to escape the training, and they have to do so by solving these sets of clues throughout the game that involve them leveraging ADP products," she says. The game might involve participants racing to find an employee's effective date in a tracking system or naming a product that offers specific features.
By focusing on questions that require research or deeper knowledge rather than common company trivia, participants are pulled in and engaged on a more profound level, Larson says.
Choose a range of use cases
Training isn't the only use case for HR gamification. You can create a game around almost any aspect of a job. Larson mentions one organization that used a simulated customer service game to better understand how candidates relate to customers during the hiring processes.
Challenging employees through gamification can help keep engagement high and people's attention to detail sharp. At the same time, challenging users through difficult scenarios to assess their problem-solving skills, resourcefulness and strategic thinking to help promote them, hire candidates or staff important projects.
Engage the senses through gamification
It's important, Larson notes, to design games that really engage employees' minds and senses.
"Consider things like a game show, where if you give the wrong answer, you're going to get a big sound effect. No one wants that," she explains. Plus, some game show tropes get dull when overused or are not very exciting to begin with. Larson points out that she's seen many organizations fall back on trivia style Q&As, which do nothing but test knowledge.
The games Larson has come up with recently are much more involved and immersive. They involve tasks like following a digitized map to work your way to a destination, playing a sports-based game requiring a bit of video-game skill, solving word and visual puzzles to unlock the next level, and role-playing as secret agents and wilderness adventurers.
These playful elements increase engagement in the moment and encourage employees to give it more attention than simply clicking on an answer.
Get inspired by gamification in action
Larson notes she witnessed a large company roll out a leadership academy only to be disappointed in the widespread lack of interest. They made changes to gamify aspects of it — such as who has read the articles or completed the tasks and rewarded them for that work. Introducing a bit of competition and a reward got their target audience excited to join in.
Participation increased, Larson says, and the impact of gamification has now become embedded in how that company does business.
Know how to manage the players
Gamification speaks to many people with its promise of a dull task made entertaining. But with so many personalities in a workplace, there are bound to be others who are reluctant to put in the effort.
Larson offers tips for increasing participation with these best practices:
Model participation and engagement by ensuring you have leadership buy-in and involvement.
Recognize those who are leading the pack and celebrate with a fun approach.
Acknowledge small victories, such as giving points or recognition just for getting started.
Check on anyone lagging behind to look for technical challenges or other barriers.
Include prizes or special opportunities — and consider having a scoreboard — to boost competitiveness.
Also realize that some people are just not interested in games, Larson says. Making participation a requirement is unlikely to get your coworkers to be happy about joining in. This is a big reason to maintain other routes of training, measuring and engaging employees. Gamification is only one way to reach your people.
Go forth and have fun out there
HR and workforce development experts are embracing gamification. With the perceived benefits, it's hard to say no to a solution that brings joy and fun to the workplace. However, thinking beyond the staid options of past years and into creative iterations available can create a whole new class of experiences to help your talent explore and grow.
ADP offers data-driven tools that help managers track and measure ongoing learning, skills development, team performance and leadership cultivation. Learn more about our talent management solutions.
