Use Reward Psychology To Retain Employee Engagement
Recognition is a fundamental requirement for employee happiness and productivity.
Who doesn’t want to feel appreciated and valued at work? It’s a fundamental requirement for happiness in the workplace. However, it is one that is often put to the bottom of the list of priorities when work gets busy. And this is a problem. Employees need recognition that involves more than a quick “thanks” when they submit their work. As humans, we’re hardwired to need this kind of recognition to keep us interested and engaged in what we’re doing and to ensure we keep up the same level of optimal output. And a lot of it comes down to biology!
When you get recognized for your efforts it leads to the release of dopamine in the brain — a transmitter that stimulates the areas of the brain that give you all the happy feelings like work satisfaction and confidence in yourself. It also improves sleep, reduces stress, and increases metabolism. Most importantly, it makes you enjoy your job.
So, how do we get this dopamine flowing in the workplace? What kind of reward system can you put in place to retain employee engagement? Well, this is where we get to the good part — the latest growing trend in creating an even more cohesive and collaborative workplace culture: Gamification.
Work Hard, Play Hard
A Gallup post on the effects of praising employees noted that “People who play solitaire at their computers all day are trying to get the dopamine hit that comes from positive reinforcement — winning is winning, and the brain feels the same whether the reinforcement comes from the boss or a freebie software program.” Gamification provides the perfect system to build a consistent rewards system for employees in this manner. In a recent survey by TalentLMS, almost 90% of participants stated gamification increased their productivity and happiness at work. This further supports studies that prove that employee recognition leads to increased engagement, motivation, productivity, and less turnover in the workplace. A lot of this is due to the sense of belonging that is a result of these efforts by employers to take a consistently supportive and encouraging role in their relationships with employees.
Gamification itself is defined as “the process of adding games or game-like elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation”, so utilizing it as the solution to create the rewards system that we know increases employee engagement is a no-brainer. “Play” is one of the top 3 reasons identified by Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan behind the motivation to work, along with purpose and potential. These are the key drivers behind the employee's ambition to succeed and are essential for long-term success. People want their work to have meaning, they want to develop both personally and professionally, and they want to enjoy the process. By adopting gamification into your company, you can support your employees by creating a culture that is focused on supporting these 3 key drivers to help them to succeed. And, in turn, help your company to succeed.
Rewards + Recognition = Long-Term Engagement
Building a successful employee rewards system requires consistency. That dopamine kick wears off pretty fast. You can’t praise someone 1 day a month and ignore their hard work for the remainder and expect it to have any kind of impact. This means that you have to combine your rewards system (which yields a short-term motivational boost) with consistent recognition of achievements for long-term commitment. In a study by Globoforce on the “ROI of Recognition’’, a whopping 78% of employees have said that recognition would motivate them to work harder. Of course, this should only be given when it is deserved, and nor do management have time to babysit employees with a gold star every day, which is why having a transparent gamification system in place is the best way to ensure this.
“Recognition is a short-term need that has to be satisfied on an ongoing basis — weekly, maybe daily.” Jim Harter, Chief Scientist at Gallup.
When employees work within a gamification system, they will consistently be rewarded for their milestones and progressions throughout the working week with trophies, badges, leaderboards, competition, and engagement with their peers. And this system also allows for employers to have an easily accessible overview of how each person is progressing and check in to congratulate them on a job well done when deserved.
Give The Rewards: Get The Results
Adopting gamification in the workplace isn’t difficult. In fact, with the Buckets app, it’s incredibly easy. As Buckets is a task management platform that focuses on work completion, we already have the tools in place needed to promote gamification amongst employees. But now, we’ve stepped up our game even more.
Our latest gamification features reward team members for completing checklists, hitting deadlines, and simply logging in. Combining gamification with a clearly outlined task management process increases communication, engagement, and confidence in both employee/employee and employee/employer relationships. If you’d like to learn even more about how Gamification works in Buckets, check out our recent blog post: Gamification: Making Work Fun!
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