Gamification and Corporate Wellness: how happy employees can increase companies’ turnover.

“What most affects workers’ performance is what they feel emotionally.”
(William A. Kahn, 1990).

Thanks to the research Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work, the university professor Kahn has brought to light a new way of conceiving people within the working environment, considering them as a central element to invest on, in order to pursue a correct and effective business strategy.

Indeed, if the employee feels comfortable, motivated and rewarded inside the working environment, it is easier for him to engage in the task entrusted to him and to carry it out in the best possible way.
Likewise, when there are moments in which colleagues and supervisors have the opportunity to discuss and confront each other, the employee is more likely to stay in the company for longer.

In an era when the transformation of the digital landscape is taking place at an intensive rate, companies cannot afford to fail in the changes. They need to engage employees so that they don’t just passively do their job: they must commit themselves for the pleasure of doing it!

Consequently, the employer plays a key role, since he has to respond to the continuous needs of the staff, ensuring that he feels essential and an integral part of the company itself.

Gamification once again can represent the crucial turning point for the company that can effectively involve the staff by introducing the typical game mechanics, improving their productivity and reducing turnover.

Gamification uses a constant positive feedback to increase motivation; it breaks down complex tasks by making them simpler so that the brain can adapt over time without being constantly under pressure.

Frequently, a classic reward system can become addictive as the same reward cannot have the same impact anymore once you adapted to it, decreasing the motivation of who is involved. So, games can easily create a system with increasing levels of power and status, as users progress through the levels.

GAMIFICATION AS A LEVER TO ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEES ENGAGEMENT

A recent report from TalentLMS, published in 2018 and produced after the Gamification introduction in business processes, thanks to a software regularly used by 400 American employees in the ages of 18 and 69, brings out many meaningful data as well such as:

• 80% of employees likes to use the gamified software at work;
• 87% of employees believes that Gamification makes them more productive, 84% more engaged and 82% happier at work;
• 75% of the interviewees that play often is more likely to agree that they would be more productive if their work proposed game mechanics;
• Only 7% said they are motivated to do a boring task to avoid being penalised. Only 6% agrees that he would have been motivated to complete a demanding task to avoid “punishment”. So, it is clear that penalties do not motivate employees, unlike financial rewards, virtual badges, etc. which are much more motivating.

It is clear that for employees the inclusion of game mechanics in the working environment is an element of great value that drives the execution of daily activities.

GAMIFICATION IN A CORPORATE WELLNESS PROGRAM: THE CaLLogix CASE

CaLLogix is a contact center and customer service company that responds to its customers needs offering cutting-edge services. It was born as a traditional response service for doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians in Manchester, New Hampshire; although today it is still a contact center, a lot has changed. In fact, it is a fully integrated contact center; it offers a wide selection of customised programs including inbound services, outbound Business-to-Business services and e-commerce services; it supports more than 1,500 customers in the United States with the industry’s most advanced technological infrastructure and a strong commitment to their activities.

The CEO, Sherry Leonard, says that the company’s goal is to be highly responsive to changing customers needs, providing an exceptional service and running a profitable company. Indeed, CaLLogix has implemented a Gamification strategy inside a broader corporate wellness program to address some critical issues, mainly related to frictions, absenteeism and the consequent increase in employees’ health costs.

In fact, these three aspects have strained the company’s economical results and have risked impacting negatively on the customers service, which is the company’s core business.

By creating the “Consciousness @CaLLogix” program, it was able to overcome this problem and achieve remarkable results.

A more aware Contact Center

The aim was to make employees healthier and happier by helping them to quit smoking, eat healthily and better manage the stress they face in their personal and professional life. If this is guaranteed, they are able to offer a better service to their customers.

Among the daily challenges of the “Consciousness @ CaLLogix” program, there are:

• Quit smoking by offering a course twice a year;
• Reduce stress by taking short moments of meditation and teaching mindfulness techniques easy to replicate;
• Eat healthily, introducing internal programs that improve eating habits in the long term;
• Encourage the sense of belonging to a team, organizing summer barbecues;
• Introduce thematic days, such as “50’s Day”, “Red Sox Day” to motivate employees in the exercise of their duties;
• Snowfly program, which provides that those who reach objectives, such as the quality of calls, are rewarded with Snowfly tokens (convertible into money, prizes, participation to important initiatives).

The infographic shows the winning results obtained thanks to the the program:

Excellent results for Callogix, but not all that glitters is gold: even Gamification, when it lacks a clear and well-defined logic, can lead to unsatisfactory results or to anything, at most. Sure enough, if the game elements are implemented without a specific strategy, they won’t allow employees to be more productive, more committed or happy to complete a task.

So, it is appropriate that a company does not ask “Does Gamification work?”, but rather “How can we implement Gamification in favour of our team?”.

Originally published at www.getplayoff.com.