3 Questions You Should be Asking About Gamification

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with gamification expert Karl Kapp. The primary focus of the webinar was to look at some of the proof points that tie together gamification and business performance. Over the course of an hour, Karl looked at three original research studies (gathered from over two million data points in Axonify), two case studies (Toyota Motor Sales and Walmart Logistics) and one meta-analysis (a study of studies). This webinar is now available on-demand, so feel free to take a look at it anytime.

In this post I want to focus on something Karl touched on at the very beginning of the webinar. He outlined some common questions he hears people ask about gamification and then juxtaposed them with questions that he feels people should be asking instead.

Let’s take a look at three of the questions you should be asking:

1. Are our employees lacking critical knowledge due to low engagement in learning?

The purpose of this question is to get at the root of why you would even consider gamification in the first place. Is a lack of knowledge causing your employees to be unsafe, sell less, provide a poor customer experience or fail to perform some other action that impacts your bottom line? If your employees are lacking knowledge it could be because they are disengaged in learning. According to the latest Gallup numbers, only 36% of employees in the United States are engaged at work. Gamification for employee engagement is an ideal solution for a disengaged workforce. In fact, according to some original research Karl presented, gamification can increase engagement by as much as 51.64%.

2. What behaviors are we trying to encourage by using gamification?

Now that you’ve got your employees to engage in learning, what does a greater level of engagement result in? I alluded to a few examples above; however, if you aren’t measuring the connection between learning and these behaviors, then you won’t be able to truly understand the impact of gamification. If you aren’t sure how to get started with this, our gamification workbook provides a five-step process on aligning gamification with learning outcomes.

3. Is gamification enough?

Something I’ve heard Karl say on many webinars is that gamification is just a piece of the puzzle. In order for gamification to be as effective as it can be, you must also consider how you’re delivering it (microlearning) and whether or not the learning that comes with it is personalized to the employee.

Check out how to make your learning super-engaging using gamification and other tactics over here.