Despite the advantages that collaboration and gamification tools in the digital workplace can create for employee engagement, productivity and customer service, very few organizations are setting daily and weekly performance goals. In fact, less than a third of companies that responded to a survey set such goals, according to an article from Networks Asia.
“Employee engagement is a prerequisite to delivering an exceptional customer experience,” Yochai Rozenblat, president of the NICE Enterprise Group, tells Networks Asia. Leveraging collaboration solutions and social enterprise tools and introducing more gamification, such as badging or leaderboards for desired activity like answering colleague’s questions, can be a great way to improve engagement.
Most of the 130 companies that responded to the survey seem to recognize the importance of incentivizing engagement at some level, with 88 percent using contests and competitions in an effort to motivate employees.
Trophies and financial incentives were the most common rewards. Only 31 percent used some kind of gamification as incentive, however, the article reports. Why not directly tie gamification and collaboration to daily and weekly performance goals? They could then be expanded to quarterly and annual goals and be a great way to motivate frontline employees.
The challenge for organizations is to measure performance on a more micro level and harness a tool to help facilitate the achievement and measurement of goals. It’s important to address how technologies are central to the changing face of the workforce. Today’s young, talented individuals are the front-line employees of the future. Organizations must find ways to use social enterprise technology to attract Gen Y workers, who are empowered by those types of tools.
While everyone is active in a digital workplace — we all use computers and interact via email — the new digital workplace is one that encourages collaboration and idea sharing. Moreover, it supports gamification as a way to incentivize employees to improve performance and be more productive.
Source: Networks Asia, October 2013
