Why Smart Companies Should Adopt the Lessons of Gaming

Businesses today often need interdisciplinary approaches to tackle new challenges. This at a time when workforces are geographically dispersed, stretched thin and, in many cases, suffering from low morale.

But how does a company bring the collective intelligence of its workforce together and energize workers in a way that motivates them to work for the common good of the business?

Companies should be taking their playbook from the gaming community. Players typically spend an average of at least 2 hours per day eagerly participating in their games, according to some studies. And a small subset of this group—about 4 percent of all gamers by some estimates—spends an average of 40 to 48 hours a week playing games. That's an entire week of work.

Increasingly, players participate in social games such as Farmville on Facebook or multiplayer war games where cooperation and teamwork are essential.

Noting this enthusiasm, smart companies are trying to tap gamers' raw energy, willingness to commit and dedication to working together, and apply it to solving business problems.

The timing is perfect. Research by the polling organization Gallup found that more than 70 percent of employees in a typical company are not engaged or, even worse, are actively disengaged.

This is a problem because there is a clear correlation between engagement and profitability. This link was confirmed in a study by global human resource consulting and outsourcing company Aon Hewitt, which found that companies with high levels of employee engagement outperformed the stock market last year.

This makes engagement a more urgent issue today than in prosperous times.

So where does gaming come in? Game developers understand how to inspire extreme effort, reward hard work and facilitate collaboration at unimaginable levels. This is exactly what businesses need today.

With gaming, participants are constantly given new challenges—easier ones at first to get them interested and progressively more difficult or complex tasks for which they are then rewarded or granted higher skill levels, which serve as status symbols that encourage the players to put in the time needed to improve their skills.

Companies that have started to apply the lessons of gaming offer some interesting ideas about the potential benefits such an approach might bring.

They've offered rewards for effective data management and curation or proficiency in a new software application. They've recognized employees for reporting safety near-misses or potential risks. Basically, these forward-thinking businesses are finding new ways to put the right motivations in front of people so they will become engaged and bring new energy to their work.

Companies that apply the lessons of gaming are often reluctant to share information about these efforts because they are quite simple yet deliver astonishing results. However, one recent public effort demonstrates the true impact of leveraging these gaming motivators can have.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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