Gamification: when digital transformation turns work into fun

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amifying is transforming daily work into an adventure. It is applying game and competition techniques to a work experience, adding a layer of fiction to reality to increase the motivation of those who live it. The work does not change: only the way you relate to it does. The daily, ordinary, and silent effort becomes an opportunity to show everyone how well you work and, incidentally, win one or more prizes for doing so. All of this, through a fictional story in which you and your co-workers are the protagonists. With the help of technology, gamification allows, on a professional level, to turn monotonous tasks into fun, solitary work into a collective challenge, and individual success into public recognition. All with a single purpose: to motivate people to bring out the best in themselves in their professional activity.

"Gamification is the way to incentivize in the 21st century," says Lluís Costa, Business Partner Manager at the multinational food and petcare company Mars Iberia. The Spanish section of the company – which has been implementing gamification among its delegates for 4 years – achieved a 6% increase in sales in its first game and an 11% increase by the end of the year. They now have 125 plays. "For me, gamification is part of that whole set of things that a company has to do to attract the best talent and to ensure that talent is retained and adequately rewarded," adds Costa. Mars is not the only multinational that is already betting on gamification. 70% of the companies that make up Forbes' Global 2000 list use or have used this technique in some of their processes. In Spain, large corporations such as Danone or Gallina Blanca also use gamification to improve their processes.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: A PARADIGM SHIFT

It is not a technology-related trend, but a change in business culture. That is what the digital transformation everyone talks about consists of: redesigning the internal dynamics of organizations by reinventing them from the perspective of technology and innovation. Digital transformation requires stopping machines and looking in the mirror. Scrutinizing each of the organization's professional dynamics and finding out what present or future digital technology could help make it better. The objective: to be more efficient, more profitable, and more sustainable over time, but also, more relevant to the people who work for or relate to the company. Improve from within and for within to be able to be better outwards as well.

Gamification is a digital tool that, through technology, puts professional teams at the center of the equation. In a way, it gives them back the leading role. The combination of elements such as healthy competition among colleagues; the potential to receive awards for doing your job well and the objective public recognition of achievements, can increase employee engagement by up to 30%. A change that, indeed, makes a difference. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report (2017), improved employee engagement increases their productivity by up to 17%, which translates into sales increases of 20% and improvements of 21% in the company's overall profitability.

HOW IS GAMIFICATION DONE?

"The first thing we do is get to know the client and their needs in depth. Understand their objectives, their work methodology and, above all, the type of players who will participate in the game. This way, we can create a tailor-made story that can emotionally connect with them," explains Joan Trilla, CEO of the Barcelona start-up Playmotiv, specialized in sales force gamification. Once the game is configured on the technological platform they have developed, the adventure begins and players interact with it through an app. At any time, from their mobile, they can check their evolution in relation to the different indicators determined by their company and do so within the context of a fiction. They can check their achievements, compare them with those of others, and find out and manage their own prizes. When the game ends, the client and the gamifier share the data (participation, improvement of performance, feedback from the players…) and analyze the results to extract the "lessons learned," according to their own jargon.

Although, according to Trilla, the most relevant thing is the return on investment. "In the end, having sold more during the time a gamification lasts does not necessarily mean that it went well for you. You have to analyze the data in a context, compare them with the effort it took you to start the game," explains the CEO of Playmotiv. And does it work? "The results indicate that. If you invested 20 and got 40, the game was profitable. But if you get 2,800 investing that same amount, it was clearly a success. We have seen such ROI proportions in our clients' results, so we know that our gamifications work."