The application of models imported from games to business life and teamwork, in view of higher productivity and staff’s enhanced involvement, has aroused the interest of Forbes Technology Council that has dedicated it a survey based on various successful examples.
Alessandra Battaglioli
Choose a job you like and you will never have to work even one day in your life, Confucius declaimed. A philosophy that is more topical than ever and unconsciously shared by many of the new talents searching for a dynamic and stimulating work environment, able to express the individual’s full potential, to cultivate it and to assure professional growth opportunities. Precisely in this changeable fast era, the gamification might help companies, facilitating the burdensome daily job duties, favouring the dialogue among individuals of the same or of different work teams, encouraging them and awarding the achievement of business targets. The direct experience of 15 members of Forbes Technology Council – the community of IT 
professionals stemmed from the collaboration between the famous economic-financial magazine and the global entrepreneurial organization YEC – provides a (further) witness of the power of game applied to the various business ambits and an overview of the strategies adopted in favour of its broader adoption. In the opinion of the specialist of conversational artificial intelligence solutions for the health sector mPulse Mobile, for instance, the gamification as support of various activities, social events, system migration and bug search, has been a successful element. It needs to be handled with care, to avoid distracting people too much from the ultimate goal – higher productivity – and in any case when the activity accomplishment is close and the long-term boost does not represent an important critical factor any longer. The gamification is also useful as tool to award a new collective and personal attitude: motivating and encouraging all professional figures through the adoption of a model that recognizes the individual and meanwhile encourages work teams towards a higher involvement, as suggested by Cognizant Softvision, active promoter of innovation and transformation of the sustainable business. According to the creators of innovative software, such as DragonSpears, Inc., the playful model can contribute in making more appealing the attainment of precise pre-established results, weekly submitted to a work team, turning to cards and scoreboards and then to a final award for those who first reach their ideal goal.
More liveable inside, more visible outside
The gamification exerts an impact on enterprises’ inner and outer environment in terms of visibility improvement, especially online, of performances and way of relating and interacting with customers and employees. An example, reported by Forbes Technology Council and concerning SupportYourApp Inc., which operates in the sector of professional premium inbound, outbound and back-office customer care, is ideated by Nike. Through a score system, users are given a scoring according to sports results that are achieved in daily practice and can be successively shared in net on specific platforms. The numerous shares and quotes on social media have contributed in increasing the popularity of the brand and, at the same time, they have constituted an excellent incentive to involve more people in playing sports.
Anyway, encouraging employees’ participation in social media brings notable advantages. As believes IGEL Technology, the creator of state-of-the-art Edge operating system for cloud work areas that, inspired by gamification logics, has introduced an involvement platform driven by the competition among employees who rise in the public ranking hand in hand with the increase of the respective presence on these channels. Acknowledgement that awards the implementation of a culture of promotion, sharing and social involvement. The gamification implies the need of better understanding and acquaintance with technological innovation in an entrepreneurial context. The creation of a game that awards employees according to a higher and higher learning level, to favour unceasing knowledge and education, was, still according to Forbes, the successful initiative of PwC multinational company, specialized in consulting and professional services. It has in fact exploited playful mechanisms to promote a culture based on the voluntary learning spread to all corporate functions, aimed at reaching specific goals and higher performances. Moreover: the challenge, issued by Axonify, B2B company of SaaS in the microlearning sector, which has involved the CEO of two supermarkets to gain the highest number of scores aiming at ever-rising knowledge of the respective organizations, is a further witness of gamification functionality. Finally, the gamification can be tailored for a determinate product type. This is the case of the company that has ideated one of the first CMMS/Enterprise Asset Management systems for mobile devices supporting maintenance teams, UpKeep Maintenance Management. The new game modalities allow making consumers’ experience more involving and customized, besides livening up B2B or software-as-a-service solutions, transforming processes into tools of team’s motivation and growth.
Security is a game
The gamification can become a useful strategy also for cyber security managers, if they are willing to promote the participation/sharing of all subordinates, eventually awarded for the good execution of the various activities that share in strengthening the security.
According to Balbix, whose solutions improve enterprises’ ranking in the ambit of critical data protection, these awards lead to deeper awareness of the theme, extended to the whole company, in order to contribute in reducing the risk of violations.
At the same time, employees can play – precisely – a very active role. This is the case of CloudInsyte, which makes cloud, data centres and cyber security its focus. With a training platform about gamified security, it has introduced an amusing intuitive method that allows the members of a team to learn hackers’ moves by simulating reciprocal attacks. All this results in better understanding of the problem and in ameliorated results in comparison with a training of traditional kind. Z
