Over the last several years, gamification has become a common strategy for businesses looking to upgrade their workplace engagement. Many industry success stories have illustrated the effectiveness of the technique and the benefits of an engaged workforce. Businesses with engaged employees were shown to , for example.
This level of employee engagement has become synonymous with gamification in the modern corporate era. Gamification is a process in which a business transforms its operations into a more fun and dynamic experience. This is accomplished by using systems in which people engage in contests, gain points and experience while competing with other employees as part of their usual work tasks, earning incentives and recognition in the process.
Many businesses, including call centers and customer service departments, have found gamification solutions and techniques such as contests, awards and recognition to have a big impact on employee satisfaction and, as a result, customer satisfaction. The current scramble to attract and retain quality employees means that the most forward-looking companies are trying to incorporate gamification into their workplaces. However, in a market where remote work is quickly becoming the norm, gamification tactics also must shift.
It’s obvious that remote workplaces operate a little differently than physical offices. The mechanisms of gamification for a remote workforce can’t rely on the natural engagement innate to working alongside other people in a shared environment, which can lead to natural levels of collaboration and competition.
In a remote environment, gamification must take on an entirely different dimension, manifesting itself through virtual elements such as game-like onboarding processes for new employees or dashboards that track employee stats and report back to them on their progress. Instead of seeing remote work as a disadvantage, companies can use remote gamification tools to improve their engagement overall, especially if they tap into the exciting new gamification trends.
Recent Gamification Trends
As companies have innovated these new methods of engagement for remote employees, gamification trends have become more focused on improving employee engagement for workers who may or may not ever set foot in one of the company offices.
One current trend in gamification is the standardization of remote onboarding systems. Though these systems have been around for a long time, remote onboarding has become so common that it is now the main process for many companies. The process has a plethora of advantages over in-person onboarding too, such as 24/7 access to company documents and content, fun challenges with colleagues and simple methods of tracking employee comprehension and engagement.
Remote onboarding also allows employers like call centers the ability to create an app for new employees to download, giving them instant access to an easy-to-navigate onboarding process. These apps can be used for training purposes, allowing a company to condense vital training information into digestible content, as well as assess an employee’s knowledge with quizzes.
Another current trend in gamification is virtual reality (VR), which allows users to do more than simply absorb information. Instead, VR allows your employees to interact with it in an interesting way. Instead of just listing off methods for making sales or a standard call script, companies can design immersive VR games that allow employees to engage with it in real-time. , such as in one call center where customer hold times were reduced by 50%.
Methods for Implementation of Gamification in a Remote Workforce
Training call center agents with gamification can be one of the most effective ways of improving your workplace. Call centers are busy places where company goals can be easily lost in the hustle and bustle of customer problems and daily tasks. These problems can be magnified in a remote work environment, where employees are often disconnected from the daily workings of the business.
Establishing a sense of achievement and success through gamification via workforce engagement management (WEM) tools can help turn an unmotivated workforce into an engaged one. Nevertheless, proper implementation of these strategies is critical to their effectiveness. Successful integration of any gamification system requires an easy-to-use user experience (UX), transparent goals and incentives and defined expectations.
Because of this, gamification can be hard to implement without an experienced company to assist you with the process. Without engaging UX and an attractive system of rewards and incentives for employees, a gamification strategy for remote agents and call centers can quickly become just another chore for workers.
It’s time to improve your workforce management and take your employee engagement to the next level. Implementing gamification can help reach your company goals by improving team-building among employees, rewarding employees who excel and shortening the learning curve for new employees.
