Gamification - Do you need an internal loyalty program to retain your employees?

Gamification is a word I hear all around currently, and I like it. For me personally taking everything far too serious gamification is a great tool to stay in balance with my stress. Hopefully it will help me last a few more years :-).

In services I use I also like gamification, who doesn't want a fun user experience showing there is some thinking and depth behind. Fun doesn't mean non-professional as it used to when I was a kid - meeting greyish robot-like-people at the bank or watching the news.

But what about your own company, could it gain from introducing a little more gamification? Will it make people more engaged and involved?

Currently I hear about several companies introducing loyalty programs for their employees. As an employee you will earn loyalty points based on your actions and your result (I assume it's based on your team/group result so it doesn't make a nursery for individualism on behalf of creating together). I guess it will be used both as a carrot to change behavior as well as strengthening correct behavior by rewarding it. Your loyalty points you can then convert to real value merchandises or services in the company internal web shop.

I can't really make up my mind if I like it or not. I like the fact that you challenge what is "normal" and that you care about your employees. I like the fact that you can promote and reward good behavior. I love how you promote role models within your organisation and cement your values around those. That's how you build your culture - remember a company doesn't have values and culture, people do.

But what makes me hesitant is how you reward and when...and what you reward with. The risk I see is that you're not getting the healthy incentives you're hoping for if you don't think it through, so please do. Wouldn't it be better if the reward was made by the individual herself, feeling good about doing something great, and by the people close around? It doesn't really scale if somebody at top (now I'm guessing) do have to come up with anything and everything to award and how much it is worth. And what does that signal about everything that's not centrally set as "rewarding", isn't that worth anything? Should the responsible person and team not take care of those things? And who will be the judge deciding who deserves which reward? Will it be fair for all or will the situations of injustice be the ones remembered?

I just picture myself, raising up my children, promising them candy every time they do what I ask them. Yes they will probably be good children doing what I ask them, ie behave well (if they don't get too crazy from all the sugar). Or will they only learn about the rewarding game and not become healthy thinking and questioning human beings? Yes, most likely they will adapt to the system, do whatever it takes to get candy when they feel like it but never do anything else. Own responsibility?, hmm what is that?

Don't get me wrong, I love games and gamification but maybe we're simplifying things a little too much believing we can apply it directly on (work)life as a whole. For isolated areas I really like the idea as it brings an extra dimension of joy and meaning to many. Like social networks it works fine. To many it brings an extra level of excitement and meaningfulness counting your likes and your friends. But running your life only based on drivers like KPIs of likes, friends and followers will probably not be the final answer to happiness, or? Life as I know it is more complex than that.

As I said I'm not really sure what I think. I love to follow the experiment of internal loyalty programs as just that, an experiment. Implemented correctly it might be a very good thing, but what I'm saying is I see risks. I love change, I think we in our modern companies need change over and over again to make sure we challenge ourselves and keep on growing professionally and personally. I love to try any ideas that come from employees for employees since they, me, we, are our greatest and only real asset. We all, as employees, have and share the responsibility to make sure work is fun. I have the responsibility to make sure I'm passionate about what I do. Just as in the life outside work (I think it's called free time) I'm sure you're taking responsibility. I'm sure you make sure to do the things you don't like as quickly as possible and spend the rest of your time on things you do like, things that you think are fun or make you feel good. Complaining? - to whom and for what reason? Of course it's good to drain your feelings to friends now and then, but complaining doesn't do any real good. And same goes for work life, I believe. Complaining I see as a sign of you failing in taking responsibility, for some reason. And it's good to understand why and do something about it - that's responsibility.

So, do you need to have an internal loyalty program to retain your employees? Maybe it's a good idea but please think it through with your employees and together understand what you want to achieve. If you think an internal loyalty program is the only thing retaining your employees, unfortunately I think you're in big trouble.

Anyhow, I'm very interested to see the outcome so please share your experience if you have some. 

Do I think it is important to keep employees involved and engaged - 100% yes. Do I like sharing company profit in any way - absolutely. Do I think people should have fun at work - where can I sign up?

So how do you design and introduce gamification within your company to increas engagement, committment and passion and keep all healthy incentives?

What's your experience of internal loyalty programs?

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After going arond for a day not getting the post out of my head I came to the following idea of how to design a gamification model that drives healty incentives and good behavior. 

What if all colleagues around you dynamically award each other points whenever they feel like you’re doing something good, something bringing value to them or others. Like a natural feedback thingy, just like you say tanks for helping or great work – may I call it “micro rewarding”.

If you are engaged, if you show you care, if you take responsibility, if you have a good perspective bringing value around, if you have a big followership, if you are a natural go-to person then you will earn your points. The great thing with this model is that you don’t need a judge nor referee for the game. It will be self-managed, how life works already.

This model of gamification will probably help you better identify valuable people not only seeing the obvious ones knowing the right people or the ones in your closest network. 

Scalable? Oh yes, this model will scale to infinity. 

But what about the reward? I think it would be enough with the honor of being seen and promoted role model. Since the points you have will (should) reflect your contributed company value, it’s of great input during your annual salary review process. Doing a normal 360 tend to make us focus on the past month or so as that’s what we humans have fresh in mind. But with this gamification model, which more or less is a live ongoing 360, the whole period will count equally important over 6 or 12 months.

Of course the model will come with challenges; there are no shortcuts in building great companies - it’s all about hard work. In this case a lot of hard work must be invested in setting the guiding principles for how to behave, setting the culture. When and what to reward and when not to. How to treat all equal and give all the same equal opportunity despite gender, religion, skin color or culture.

Dangers? Actually, as we see with gaming, the constant rewarding and hunt for the next reward after that, might not be very healthy. For some it might become the uncontrollable heroine. But for the majority I think it would be a very interesting experiment to be part of. And I think it really will get the dialog and communication going about values, about what is good behavior and not. About how to spend your time in the best possible way. About how to take responsibility and being a role model. About how to build the great company of tomorrow.

  

What a an exciting and fun experiment to follow J  

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