Gamification : a mantra for customer-employee engagement

By Deepanie Perera and Madu Ratnayake

Millennials are coming and they are different. Did you know that soon the world will be ruled by the millennials?

'Millennials' aka Generation Y, is the generation that is just entering or is in line to enter the work force. They are typically those who were born between 1983 and 2003.

Among the distinct characteristics of the generation are recognition and reward obsession, short attention spans, high creativity, the desire for diversity and working with cross-cultures, born networking skills, an identity as technology savvy, ambitious, more fun-loving, and more loyal to their career versus their employer.

By 2025, 75 percent of the global workforce will be made up of millennials. In the United States alone, 28 percent of managerial positions are already held by millennials. Sixty percent of today's millennials use social media to rant and rave about companies and products. They account for US$ 1.3 trillion of what consumers spend annually.

Deloitte, which is engaged in global research on millennials found that they want leadership, and they want it their way. It also found that they are less interested in running your company than running their own. Seventy percent of respondents according to the research wanted to launch their own organisation with the highest percentages coming from Brazil, China, India (emerging markets), and Mexico.

Service

In the same study, when millennials busted many stereotypes, the leaders' (Gen Xers - born between 1964 and 1982, and Boomers - born between 1946 and 1963) perception of millennials did not change drastically, as they continued to cite maturity and self-awareness as key development needs of millennials.

They thrive on fairness and performance-based appraisals, not tenure. Don't expect long and loyal service, just results, with the right ingredients provided.

Cathy Benko and Molly Anderson's 'The Corporate Lattice' may be just the right recipe for some of our corporate ills. It challenges the traditional corporate ladder approach of leadership development and reinforces the dire urgency of creating leadership opportunity at every layer of the ladder, making it look like a 'lattice'.

For those organisations with traditional models of management and leadership with a strict hierarchy, where millennials have to adapt to such strict structures, time may be fast running out.

In fact, they may be pushing their organisations to the brink of extinction. Extinction, because the labour force that is made of millennials sooner or later won't be choosing such environments for work, as their interests lies elsewhere. According to Gartner Inc. sources, the video game market place is supposed to see a growth of 18.3 percent this year, reaching $128 billion by 2017.

Motivation

This is a direct impact of the rapidly increasing video game addiction of millennials, where it is estimated that by the age of 21, a millennial child would have spent 10,000 hours playing video games.

That is equivalent to 416.6 days. With that much of game play, millennials are hardwired or addicted to the rush that a game delivers by the time they join the workforce. So creating game-like environments to engage your millennial customers and employees not only makes sense, but has become a necessity.

Why is gaming addictive?

In the centre of the very concept of games lies the need to win, the need to feel successful and be recognised and satisfied at the end of it all. From a psychological perspective, making work or any other activity similar to a game where winners and achievements are recognised will amount to a serious boost in motivation.

This is scientifically explained by the chemical 'Dopamine', which in fact is a hormone the brain releases every time one achieves victory, which gives a momentary 'high' that makes the body feel good over such achievement.

Dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter, meaning it is released by nerve cells in the brain to send signals to other nerve cells. Among several distinct functions of Dopamine systems, reward-motivated behaviour is one major role it plays and is responsible for, whereby as a result, the more the reward, the more dopamine that gets released.

When achievement is backed by recognition, it leaves the person motivated not only momentarily but on the long term, making him or her want to do more. It motivates the person to achieve and continue to want to achieve.

Applying game mechanics to a non-game environment such as the workplace to attain behavioural change through greater employee engagement, has today, become a proved, powerful strategy to influence and motivate the workforce, not only to achieve immediate goals but also as a tool for innovation. This concept has come to be known as 'gamification'.

According to Bunchball sources, a leading gamification company, gamification is the process of taking something that already exists - a website, an enterprise application, an online community - and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement and loyalty.

Gamification takes the data-driven techniques that game designers use to engage players, and applies them to non-game experiences to motivate actions that add value to your business.

Making the workplace a fun-to-be game-like environment will motivate the millennial employee to overcome the Monday morning blues as they will experience an addiction to Dopamine at work, making it an exciting proposition to look forward to work. Imagine a weekend of games to a work-week of games?

A 'well-gamified process' will create a near game-like engagement for employees and customers.

It creates opportunities for employees to accomplish regular small wins and earn a healthy reputation among peers in a fun environment, which is essential for deeper engagement.

Some key building blocks of enterprise gamification:

Scoring is essential for games. A simple point scheme or a counting scheme will keep score of accomplishments. Levels show the depth of mastery one has achieved pertaining to a certain skill, process or a in a new challenge. Levels establish a sense of progress.

Badges are the way to build one's digital reputation. Badges symbolise skills, accomplishments or contributions and act as an intrinsic reward for achievement.

Leaderboards provide visibility and ranking. They drive competition, thereby, improving overall performance and help build reputation.

These are some of the more visible elements of gamification, a proper design, however, needs a deeper understanding of motivations to choose the right game mechanics and to even decide whether gamification is appropriate in a given context.

Over 70 percent of the global Virtusans (Virtusa employees) are millennials. Given this realisation, the company proactively adopted a strategy to engage this generation of the workforce using technology.

To ensure co-creation of value for an engaged customer and an engaged employee, their differentiation strategy meant innovation, productivity and agility to remain integrated.

An important part of a three-pronged approach for Virtusa was gamification of employee outcomes. An internal social network pretty much similar to Facebook connects Virtusa communities innovatively.

A multitude of outcomes and KPIs receive immediate recognition through the award of well defined badges and points, which are visible to the entire organisation. With breaking down work to the smallest component possible and enhancing it by adopting gamification and social networks, they bring friends, fun and feedback in regular cycles to build a game-like environment at work with opportunities for Dopamine to work.

Here to stay

This year over 70 percent of Global 2000 organisations will have at least one 'gamified' application, according to Gartner Inc. analysts. While the success of gamification is largely driven by novelty and hype, gamification is positioned to become a highly significant trend over the next five years.

"Gamification inspires deeper, more engaged relationships and change behaviour, but it needs to be implemented thoughtfully," said Research Vice President at Gartner, Brian Burke. "Most attempts at gamification currently miss the mark, but successful and sustainable gamification can convert customers into fans, turn work into fun, or make learning a joy.