How Gamification is Boosting Compliance Rates Everywhere

Remember when you were young and you inadvertently did something to annoy your parents? Do you remember what they said to you when they lost their patience?

“Stop playing games!”

As a child, playing games sometimes equated to being disobedient. As an adult, playing games often induce feelings of guilt. Why? Because we should be working, of course! Games are the opposite of work, right? They make us think we’re slacking off or procrastinating, or just plain being lazy. Taking it a step further, consider how employers must view playing games in the workplace. Can you imagine?

What exactly is Gamification?

Perhaps many of you can imagine that, thanks all of the buzz lately about “gamification.” Gamification applies typical elements of game playing (like point scoring, competition with others and rules of play) to other areas of activity; such as staff training, which is what we’ll talk about here. So now, just as parents tell their kids to quit playing games, we’re discovering that some employers have the same reaction:

“I don’t want my staff playing games!”

Can you blame them? Whoever coined the term “gamification” really missed the mark, in my opinion. The benefits of gamification are amazing, but the term can be so off-putting to employers when it comes to training staff. If employers knew that incorporating gaming elements into their training could provide a much more engaged staff, introduce friendly competition between departments, and significantly boost compliance rates, I’m pretty sure they’d welcome it with open arms. Who doesn’t want boosted compliance rates? Let’s face it: compliance training is not always fun for the professionals taking it, but it is necessary. Interactive courses definitely help, but adding gaming elements takes motivation to a different level, moving staff from completing training because they “have to” to completing it because they “want to.”

But aren’t staff just wasting time decorating their badges? How could this boost compliance?

I get it. There’s a crest, and decorations, and coins that you can use to buy more decorations. It’s practically giving employees a free ticket to kick back and have fun. It takes precious time away from doing their actual jobs and providing valuable services to their clients. How are gaming elements possibly worth it?

Let me share a few behind-the-scenes benefits about how gaming elements actually work. After getting past the “playing games” part of this tool, you’ll see that the only way employees can advance or be rewarded is by actually working.

Gaming elements:

• Drive compliance by rewarding early completion
• Enforce long-term motivation and friendly competition between coworkers and departments
• Increase staff engagement, which results in improved knowledge retention, performance and client outcomes
• Foster knowledge retention by awarding points for high exam scores
• Encourage learner pride in and individual ownership of their training

So you see, it’s not all about playing games. Gamification is a well-researched and effective tactic to motivate your staff to learn, while at the same time boosting compliance. I say we rename gamification! Any ideas?

What are you doing to boost your compliance rates? Leave a comment below!

Compliance shouldn’t be difficult. Take a look at our free eBook to see how Relias makes compliance easy.