Mobile technology has enabled frontline workers to get connected, receive communication relevant to their job and perform simple tasks such as informing management of faulty machinery. These small yet significant gains in mining and manufacturing are impacting on health and safety in the workplace, particularly in third world countries where connectivity is poor. But taking it one step further, how can gamification serve these large enterprises?
In the last decade or two, we have welcomed Millennials and Gen Zs into the workplace and much has been said about our differences. In particular, the way in which Millennials and Gen Zs use technology is vastly different from that of the Baby Boomers and Gen Xs – who are the grey-haired decision makers of our time.
A hook for contribution from younger generations
The younger generations want to be able to do more than simply complete a handwritten incident report or workplace safety observation after an incident has occurred. They’d rather use their smartphone’s GPS, camera, voice recording, and texting capabilities to capture real-time data. They’d rather gather a handful of colleagues and create their own “explainer” videos to demonstrate safety protocols as a means to prevent further incidents from happening.
While the older generations are relatively happy to receive company comms and complete tasks on-the-go, Millennials and Gen Zs respond better to gamified mobile experiences. Gamification is a fun, competitive way of encouraging employees to pay attention to important tasks and complete their training via learning systems, with each activity resulting in digital badge rewards that “unlock” new levels.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much more is a video worth?”
But gamification is influencing more than just health and safety in the workplace.
The impact of gamification on sales
Leaderboards are proving to be a powerful mechanism for increasing sales and driving user adoption. A leading family restaurant franchise is using Wyzetalk to increase sales per customer by displaying live updates of average sales per head per employee on the leaderboard. By giving employees a view of their position on the leaderboard and seeing the performance of their peers, it has encouraged employees to work harder. Our client has seen improved performance within just a few months where the average spend per head has notably increased.
Adorning digital badges
A best-loved health food chain is using digital badges to reward their employees for things like performance, values, ideation, app activity, attendance, productivity and training.
In the build-up to Easter, they use gamification to “hide” easter eggs on their employee app for users to find. Employees login, hunt around the app looking for eggs, click on one when they see it and redeem a prize such as airtime or retail vouchers. It’s proving to be highly effective for driving app activity, and employees learn to navigate their way around the app and discover useful content in a fun way.
Do you know what the Millennial / Gen Z to Baby Boomer / Gen X ratio is in your business? What are some of the ways that gamification could make your efforts work harder to influence behaviour and drive productivity?