At April’s Innovation Day, we welcomed Dr Agnessa Spanellis, Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University. With her, we explored how gamification can positively influence the dynamics between co-workers and how it can be used to improve organisational processes and open new doors in behaviour and innovation management.
This theme particularly resonated during these days of global unrest. Getting a fresh, outside perspective through the lens of gamification can be extremely useful when, all of a sudden, opportunities for innovation and rapid change are staring us in the face.
Businesses today face three key challenges:
- Cultural barriers: Today, more than ever, we need creativity, innovative processes, agility and fresh ideas to navigate the business world, and these are especially necessary when going through challenging times. However, sharing knowledge is sometimes avoided: people might be afraid of losing their competitive advantage if they share their ideas, or discouraged altogether in some organisations. This disincentivises collaboration and creativity, and reduces employee engagement.
- Structural barriers: Even if gamification has now infused the language of business, actual games are still taboo in most organisations. Sometimes there are structural barriers that slow down the flow of gamification: when a company is hierarchical and there are too many bureaucratic layers, embedding game dynamics in everyday processes becomes difficult, if not impossible.
- Process barriers: Crises demand movement and change, quick ideation, decision-making and different thinking. And yet, creativity and knowledge can be highly elusive; they cannot be simply extracted from the minds of employees and transferred to others. If people simply “don’t have time” for innovation and knowledge sharing, how can organisational learning be embedded into everyday processes?
So, how can these challenges be overcome through gamification?
Introduce gamification in the organisation in small steps. Start with something small, for example introduce public recognition and a system of points of gratitude: every time an employee achieves something, post it in the company newsfeed and provide them with the status symbol of a gratitude point. This will increase the visibility of what people are doing in the organisation, will encourage knowledge sharing and promote a sense of ownership. Then, progressively introduce competitions, badges, virtual games, and corporate avatars, for example, a company mascot. While points of gratitude seem to work in any organisation, make sure you find the right metaphor and right gamification tool for your specific team.
Start small, think big. Test the initiative with a small, more open and dynamic department. Select a smaller team that will be more receptive to these initiatives and excited about them. Once you have polished and tested your strategies, this small group will work as your local ambassador when the initiative is rolled out. Gamification mechanisms have the potential to incentivise voluntary and desired behaviour; however, make sure that users are not forced to play the game.
Use gamification to create opportunities for interacting with ideas and between participants. This can start with a portal or forum where anyone can share ideas. Each employee can browse through the portal, rate ideas, and invest points in their favourite ones. If an idea proceeds through what is called the “innovation funnel” and upgrades to the implementation phase, the employees that invested in it will receive more points.
These are just some key highlights taken from April’s Innovation Day. Each month, clients of the Innovation Programmes receive a full ACT report, capturing the guest expert’s research, the implications and next steps for leaders to apply back in their team and organisation.
Sources: Spanellis, A. (2020) ‘Gamification for Knowledge Management’, KnowledgeBrief Innovation Day Presentation, 8 April.