It has already been proven in industry and in government, that adding Workplace Games, also called Gamification, to your business will both motivate and unite your business towards maximizing new opportunities. In an interview, Tom Kalil, (Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology) made the point that NASA’s use of oazagames had a Return on Investment 5 to 10 times higher than the costs associated with the rewards that the game generated. He shared insights where DARPA and the DOE used prizes and challenges to reward and incentivize. He provided examples of various government organizations as using Gamification successfully that included NASA, DOE and DARPA.
To begin the process of adding Workplace Games to your business you should start by performing an assessment of your business strategy, vision and goals. This will help your company update and align your business priorities so that the game directly supports your business and the necessary activities that can best be rewarded through the game. There are different ways to setting up but we believe that you should keep it simple and directly aligned to your business. We setup many of our games using a Project Management format that initiates the game in much the same way any project should be started. Simply stated, projectize your game so that you follow the same steps in starting your game as you would properly start and manage a new project. Follow the example of others who have already added games to their business to avoid mistakes.
There are many innovative examples where games were used to motivate and unite businesses for success if you look for them. Diverse companies, large and small, public and private, have used Workplace Games to motivate and unite their stakeholders across a wide range of industries that includes: NASA, DARPA, DOE, UPS, Deloitte, Bunchball Inc., Warner brothers, Comcast, Adobe and others. Industries have included the health and insurance industry, science and technology, law enforcement and many others. Don’t start over when it isn’t required; lessons learned and best practices save time, money and other resources.
Knowing your key competitive factors and comparing them with your peer and competitions may be a good way to look for differentiators. Your own strategies, tactics and the use of best practices are then aligned with your company’s existing processes into the game. Look for goals, schedule, desired wins, past business results and so on for possible reward milestones and corrections or changes to your current processes. The best milestones are deliverables of various maturity and specific events in a schedule where activities are completed to move onto the next activity. These deliverables and schedule milestones, when recognized and rewarded for timely completion encourages repeatable best practices in your business. These can be tailored to your specific needs and desires.
One important recommendation is that you remember you should keep the game straightforward and aligned to your vision. Make the game a public competition based on measurable results that align to the desired results that move your business forward. Avoid meaningless rewards as this distracts from the real purpose of the game. This purpose should be aligned to taking advantage of opportunities, new innovations and improving products and services of your business. Expect measurable improvements in innovation and business efficiency. Critical success factors and key performance indicators are good examples for identifying most reward and recognition points where improving the quality, direction and innovative quickness is the focus for both your business and the game. It is most important that the game aligns to your business so that the business and your business results are the clear focus of the game. If the game does not align to the purpose of your business, it will be hard to gain support for playing the game.