Our last post focused on how workplace gamification can encourage your staff to competitively exceed their targets. Gamification is not just about rivalry though, and there are several ways it should be used for workplace support and collaboration – we’ve outlined three suggestions below.

1.      Reward Systems

In video games, “rewards” range from a happy bleep for passing a checkpoint, to acquiring a new skill after completing a difficult level. Both examples demonstrate textbook positive reinforcement, and encourage the player to keep progressing.

Borrowing this continuous reward system for your workplace similarly motivates employees to frequently go the extra mile, assuring them that their hard work is recognised. To implement this, you first have to first make the employee objective clear – for example, meeting a deadline particularly early, or undertaking extra training.

Next, offer appropriate incentives – remember, financial bonuses aren’t always the most meaningful. Consider alternatives, such as:

• Half-day holidays
• Honorary titles (e.g. First Aid Champion, Excel Superstar)
• Catered lunch, or paid lunch
• Professional development opportunities

Make it clear whether the prizes are available for an individual, a particular team or multiple departments.

2.      Social Support

Online forums almost always use a points system for distinguishing valuable contributions. These points are usually attributed by other members of the community, reinforcing a sense of peer-approval and collaboration.

Bring this into your company culture by creating an endorsement system. Instead of a management-appointed “Employee of the Month”, let staff vote on which of their colleagues they feel is most deserving of recognition. You can take the pressure and politics out of this process by using a CLiKAPAD electronic voting system to keep polls anonymous. Not only will the system be democratic (encouraging all staff to strive for success), but show the level of team-support within the company.

3.      Skill Sharing

Another gamification tactic found in forums is awarding badges, which visibly promote a member’s achievements. These can be for longstanding membership, hitting a milestone or proving knowledge about a particular topic. It’s an ego-boosting device that recognises expertise, loyalty and commitment.

Obviously, these things are all beneficial for your company, so why not add a “badge” feature to employee intranet profiles? Not only is it a free way to recognise staff dedication, it also flags their skillsets to other members of staff. In practical terms, it means that the next time you need help with the CRM system or an excel formula, you can look up the nearest person with the software experience you need to help. They can enjoy the experience of sharing their knowledge, and you get to learn something new instead of sitting around and getting frustrated.

Gamification is about making difficult processes more like video games, in order to encourage engagement, improve learning and build positive habits. Over the last few years it has become a business buzzword, with managers keen to reap the benefits of gamifying their workplaces.

Although the concept sounds good on paper, it can be difficult to know how to begin implementing it within your workplace. Luckily, it’s actually much easier than you think, and you probably have most of the groundwork already active in your processes. Here are a few examples of how you can bring these out in your everyday processes.

1. Progress Bars

When you’re waiting for a program to load, working your way through a survey and evening listening to a song on a digital device, you will see a kind of progress bar. They are so prevalent – and the satisfaction they create is so simple – that we barely associate them with video games at all, making them the perfect way to introduce gamification into your workplace.

The easiest way to start is with a measurable goal – like sales targets. It’s likely that you already measure your sales figures as a percentage, so simply display your daily, weekly or monthly requirement as the marker at the end of a bar, and fill the meter as orders come in. Your sales team can watch their progress, and be motivated to keep bringing in business to complete their objective.

2. Competition

The most central aspect of gaming is that it involves competition, encouraging players to exceed the skill of the opposition. Use this to your company’s advantage by assigning a points system to otherwise mundane tasks, and creating a leaderboard for individuals or departments.

For example, a tedious health and safety training session can be spiced up with intermittent quiz rounds, to see who has been paying attention. Track answers by using a CLiKAPAD electronic voting system, assigning prizes to the top scorers and actively improving the training by recapping any weaker topics.

3. Independent Scoring

If pitting your staff against each other doesn’t feel right for your company, you might be able to use gamification for employees to improve upon their own independent performance.

This works particularly well for highly-repetitive processes like data entry or stock checking, which tend to become slower or less-accurate as fatigue sets in. A scoring system that measures the speed and accuracy of a completed job can help employees monitor their own progress, and give them personal targets to beat. Maintain positive reinforcement to improve staff morale and keep errors to a minimum.

There are several common situations that are typically very tricky to navigate in group-based workshops, meetings and training sessions. Thankfully, many of them can easily be resolved by integrating an audience response system into your presentation.

BREAKING THE ICE

The most frustrating thing for many presenters is trying to squeeze the first answer out of their audience. Perhaps it’s awkwardness or uncertainty, but most people are unwilling to be the first to one to break the silence.

Luckily, this can be minimised by starting your session with an ARS. Nobody has to make a show of answering with a keypad, making it seem like much less effort. This inspires more people to participate, eventually leading to better engagement and discussion later in the workshop.

Tip: Start with easy questions for maximum early engagement

BROACHING TOUGH TOPICS

Whether it’s admitting that we don’t understand a particular subject or disclosing an unpopular opinion, there is always something we are reluctant to share with our peers.

An ARS is a discreet way to for participants in a meeting to reveal these views without feeling self-conscious. It can be useful to determine satisfaction ratings, identify gaps in training knowledge, or share team members’ personal workplace priorities, with all data remaining anonymous.

INTRODUCING COMPETITION

Some friendly competition can really bring a workshop to life, and an audience response system is a great way to make sure everyone is involved.

Let your audience know if you’re going to pepper your whole presentation with test questions, or host a quiz-style recap at the end of your session. You can split the room into several groups and make them play head-to-head, or hand keypads out to individuals.

The versatility of ARS software means you can be as creative as you like when designing your questions, offering multiple choice questions, measuring “fastest finger first” results and tracking particular answers back to a specific keypad.

Tip: Your quiz can highlight any parts of your session that might have been unclear, so leave a little time at the end to address these.

An audience response system (ARS) is an excellent way to keep large groups engaged, entertained and actively thinking about your presentation. Not only will it offer a fresh format for your audience to enjoy, but the data you can collect will make your event more meaningful with very little effort on your part. Here are three key ways that the data from your audience response system will bring you closer to your listeners:

PROVIDING RELATABLE DATA

Well-researched statistics can be both useful and impressive, but too many can leave your audience feeling detached from the topic. By polling your room and using their responses alongside your researched figures, you can demonstrate how your topic directly applies to your audience, making a much bigger impact.

An ARS can also provide an organised way for your listeners to give feedback throughout your session, so you can track their general understanding and address any specific issues by tracing responses back to individual keypads.

IMPROVING YOUR STORY

You can use an ARS at your event to conduct a quick survey, to gain a better understanding of the people within your audience. This can allow you to adapt your content to make it more relevant. For instance, if your examples often refer to large corporations, and you discover your room is mostly filled with representatives from SMEs, you may be able to tailor those sections to make them more relevant for your audience.

Depending on the information, you may want to keep these audience responses anonymous and use the data for yourself, rather than broadcasting it to the room.

LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER

The great part about large presentations is how diverse your audiences can be from session to session. Using electronic voting to interact with each group can reveal trends and variations, that you can in turn share with future groups.

Not only does it offer new and interesting information for each audience, it prevents the sessions from becoming too repetitive for you as a speaker!

Almost everyone gets nervous before they have to speak to a large group of people. So if public speaking has never been one of your strong point it can be understandable if your nerves are threatening to get the better of you before you give a presentation at a conference. Here are some top tips to help you deal with those nerves.

Practice

There is simply no substitute for practice. Many pre-conference nerves come from the fact that you don’t feel confident in what you’re about to perform. So make sure over the weeks leading up to the conference that you practice and practice again until you feel at ease with the words and the subject matter.

Understand the technology you’re using

At conferences, many speakers like to use technology like an audience response system to enhance their presentation. This can be a great idea, but it’s important that you understand the technology completely before you try to use it. It’s often the case that the technology is a key part of the presentation so if it stops working it can make it very challenging.

Smile

One of the most important things you can do during your conference talk is to smile. Smiling not only relaxes your audience, amazingly it can do the same thing for you. The body knows to that smiling is a sign that everything is OK and releases endorphins – the chemicals that make you feel good.

Don’t expect perfection

You should never expect that your presentation is going to go off perfectly – if your mind goes blank on the content of a section or you accidentally miss out something you were supposed to talk about, don’t worry. Even the most experienced and confident public speakers make mistakes. The truth is the audience simply won’t notice that you have made a mistake, so just go on as normal and everything will be fine.

Get off to a strong start

The most important part of the presentation to get right is the first few minutes. If you can get your introduction right, you’ll feel good and gain confidence as you continue into the talk. It also sets you up perfectly. Make sure that you rehearse the start so that you know it perfectly by heart without having to look at any cue cards or script.