Capgemini Consulting: The 5 advantages of gamification
It is commonly known that failing to address 'soft' factors such as leadership, resistance and skills gaps are one of the critical reasons why large transformations fail. According to Capgemini Consulting, organisations can boost the effectiveness of their transformation programs by using gamification. And not only for programs aimed at employees on the work floor, but also managers and even CEO's enjoy playing games that have the objective of realizing an underlying change in behaviour.
Advantages of Gamification
According to the consulting firm gamification - the application of game design techniques to a business setting - can drive positive outcomes in five key business areas: change management, employee engagement, employee training and learning, innovation and process efficiency.
Gamification Accelerates Change Management
Mimics of real-world business situations through games makes giving real-time feedback more engaging. As a result, employees can more effectively adapt to new processes, systems and business models. "Higher employee engagement in game-like settings leads to lower resistance to change which helps in accelerating transformation" says Capgemini Consulting.
Gamifying Processes Helps Drive Employee Engagement
Clear rules of engagement, short-term achievable goals, accelerated feedback cycles and recognition of accomplishments in gamification helps drive employee engagement and motivation. And in turn more engaged employees will lead to better performance: engaged employees put forth 57% more effort and are 87% less likely to leave their company than employees who consider themselves disengaged.
Gamification Speeds up Employee Training and Learning
Research of the consulting firm shows that a lack of required skills is the largest impediment to transformation. Games can significantly help in closing the skills gap, through for instance process games, eLearning games or gaming simulations. Results from projects demonstrate that employees using games had 11% higher factual knowledge levels, 14% higher skill-based knowledge levels and 9% higher retention rates compared to employees trained in a traditional learning environment. This effect becomes large for the young technology-savvy Generation Y workforce, which struggles to sit through lengthy, non-interactive presentations.
Gamification support innovation
Gamification helps create an environment that facilitates creativity, fosters peer collaboration in a fun, competitive environment and moves innovation out of a siloed structure. In addition, gamification is ideal for leveraging crowd-sourcing, such as new ideas through competition and reward-based innovation systems.
Gamification Improves Process Efficiency
Gamification helps companies drive process transformations, such as process redesign, BPO or digitization projects. As a best practice, Capgemini Consulting cites a project at Google, where game mechanics helped it successfully implement a new travel expenditure process, with 90% compliance in a short time span, which led to a major saving across the globe.