On Monday 1st June 2015 the Financial Times published the article “The games people play at work as part of the job” in Emma De Vita’s Working Smarter column. A picture of the article in the paper is shown in full on the right.
I thought I’d mention that I talked about the BreatheHR system as it uses some key gamification strategies, such as Kudos which enables employees to give instant feedback and praise to each other. It also links employee objectives to company goals and gives you a Performance Hub to show your progress towards these. Finally, I’m aware that they’ve just launched an Idea Wall feature to capture employee suggestions, and have some interesting plans to gamify this more.
In the article I also mention that I use Trello as my task management app, and I do use this occasionally but actually I more often use our own CRM.me system which has the same progress bar feedback mechanism but is fully integrated into the CRM so tasks are usefully linked to Contact, Company, Project and Sales Opportunity records.
Still, the article ends on a fairly negative note about gamification with which I disagree. There are now hundreds of case studies about successful gamification projects (take a look at Marigo Raftopoulos’s paper: How enterprises play: Towards a taxonomy for enterprise gamification for more information) but also a more engaging job is a more fun one. Once you’ve covered your financial needs enough to be comfortable then the most motivating incentives to do your job are those relating to intrinsic motivators such as learning and socialising (i.e. working in teams).
I totally agree with your statement that ends the article. I also just sent Emma an Email with some more facts and my sympathy for the way she feels about her work. And that she should change jobs if she doesn’t have fun at work.
Thanks for your comment Mario. I agree it does sound like she doesn’t have fun at work!