“We tried gamification, but it didn’t work.”
Many Types of Gamification
We’ve heard this a few times. Er, a few dozen times.
Years ago I wrote what has been called the first consumer book on how to use LinkedIn. When I was researching for the book the most common rebuttal I heard was “I tried LinkedIn. I set up a profile, and it’s been over a year, and nothing has happened. It doesn’t work.”
It’s like walking into a restaurant and standing in the corner, just waiting for things to happen. You don’t get your meal until you get seated and tell the server what you want.
Gamification at Work
For years we’ve heard people talk about their gamification system they had that didn’t work. They signed up for a system and one of two things happened: Either the system they signed up for looked good but didn’t have the depth and breadth of features the organization needed, or the system was fine but the organization’s leadership team wasn’t behind it, and didn’t do anything to help ensure a successful rollout.
Both of those factors are critical to have gamification at your organization work.
We’ve talked to people who have had a gamification system that just didn’t do what they thought it should do. The features were pretty but too limited. When go for pretty without understanding your needs, and how your employees will use the system, you can easily make a bad purchase. The gamification system will work for a few weeks, during the honeymoon phase, but then adoption drops. I’ve seen this, to the point where management sends out emails begging their employees to use the system.
The other problem is when management and leadership just don’t care about the system. Look, we want YOU to be successful. We want you to see real, measurable ROI when you use Snowfly. Snowfly is usually in place to improve culture, employee performance, employee satisfaction, and other such metrics. These are kind of hard to measure. Improvements are hard to track. It’s understandable that management would focus more on hard metrics, and maybe address culture issues later. It’s always easier to just push complex issues down the agenda. But one day it will become important. When you measure the cost of turnover, or realize that low employee satisfaction is leading to low employer branding, and it’s hard to hire great talent, it becomes important.
Gamification in HR and performance needs to happen before you need results. Effective management and leadership understand that as soft as this might feel, it is critical for the long-term health of the organization.
If You Can Measure It, You Can Gamify It
Gamification becomes a flash in the pan when the appeal goes away. This usually happens when the system you create is a “one trick pony.” The trick, and the pony, lose their luster pretty quickly. At Snowfly we work with sharp leaders who recognize that a key to a successful gamification program is to have a steady flow of tricks. Change what you measure, and reward, depending on organizational circumstances, or current events. Introducing new programs keeps employees coming back for more, and engaged in the system. What you measure should lead to improvements in KPIs or other organizational objectives.
Snowfly can interface with almost any system (that allows for interfacing), from point of sale systems to sales systems to call center dashboards to whatever you have. We can take hard metrics and create leaderboards and reward thresholds. We can track and trend, which is great for management. Employees love this because they get a clear idea of what they need to improve on in order to get rewards and recognition. They can see where they are at, at any time, and know how much more they need to do to hit their goals.
Gamification Should Not Be Managed With Spreadsheets
Too often gamification, rewards, and incentives systems are manually tracked in a spreadsheet. We get it… it seems to be cheaper, and maybe faster and easier.
We’re here to tell you that it is most likely not cheaper, nor faster, nor easier. Perhaps most detrimental, though, managing gamification and incentives programs with a spreadsheet can be inaccurate. Human error is something we can live with, unless and until it impacts a check or other reward an employee is waiting for. If the person managing your gamification and incentive program is out sick, or makes mistakes, and your employees get delays or the wrong rewards, the trust can be reduced to zero.
The last thing you want is your program to not be trusted. That’s almost a guaranteed program failure.
Let’s talk numbers… give us a call and let us know what you are doing. I bet you’ll find Snowfly is very cost effective, and accurate and reliable. We have a dedicated team of developers and support to ensure your program earns the trust of your employees.
Snowfly’s Gamification Actually Works
We focus on having a system that your employees love and use. They trust us, and they look forward to using Snowfly to redeem points earned. We have manager and leadership reports and dashboards to help provide realtime information. More important, we spend time with your organization to understand your objectives, and what you want out of the program. We aren’t hear just to make a sale, we’re here to become one of the most valuable vendor/partners you have. We pride ourselves on getting results with and for you. That’s what we get up for every day.
Ready to learn about Snowfly Gamification and your organization? We’d love to chat. Please contact us and let’s see how we can work towards your organizational objectives with you!
