The following entry is a response to Rachel Emma Silverman’s blog post “Making Work Like Angry Birds” from Wall Street Journal Blogs.
Silverman discusses the trend of “gamification” emerging in the workplace, in regards to how an increasing number of firms are incorporating videogame-like aspects into employee tasks to increase productivity. Employees get points and rewards for completing tasks within a certain amount of time. In some workplaces, a leaderboard even shows the highest-ranking employees. Silverman is enthusiastic about this system because most work is “dull”.
The idea of motivating workers through creating a rewards-based, competition-like environment is interesting, and seems to make a lot of sense. For tedious, “number-crunching” jobs, this system could work very well in terms to increasing employee engagement. However, this would not work for all types of jobs, such as those that demand a high level of creativity and innovative thinking: as in this situation, gamification’s effects would not be great as employees are probably already highly motivated and enthusiastic. The appropriateness of gamification for each workplace should be evaluated before being introduced, but seems like a possible productivity-raising system that employers can consider in the future.
Source: Wall Street Journal Blogs
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