Gamify Your Workday

Bringing Games into the workplace can create positive, competitive fun that will invigorate team members of all ages. Take a quick poll of your community site teams and find out how many have played a video game of some sort in the past 30 days. Whether it is Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Call of Duty, or online arcade games, chances are that nearly all of your team members have engaged in gaming of some type recently. Why is that? Because it is fun! 

Many in-touch companies have started incorporating gaming into their employee’s everyday activities as a way to provide engagement and excitement.  Most have used gaming for training for some time but are now using the motivation benefits of games in everyday work life.

Check out Grace Hill’s learning games if you want some examples of gaming for training - http://www.gracehill.com/learningcenter/training/learning_games/default.cfm

The multifamily industry has been a bit ahead of the curve in the area of gaming: using leaderboards for leasing with prizes attached is a perfect example of gaming that has been in use for some time in apartment offices across the country.  However, there are some new ways to think about exciting your employees with gaming and we thought we’d share a few examples.

1. Tie in popular culture.  Use themes that play on pop culture to make the game feel bigger and more current.  Examples include, The Biggest Leaser, Grace Hill Idol, The Leasing Factor, Maintenance has Talent, etc…
2. Make everyday tasks on a timeline a part of the game by rewarding game tokens or advances for a job well done.  An example could be constructing a wheel of fortune type word puzzle and for every assigned task completed the person gets a guess at a letter. The first employee to properly guess the puzzle wins the prize.
3. Involve all team members in joint games, and do not group team members by department. If you really want to see a team come together, let them game together, or better yet, pit community against community and let each team show their team spirit in creative ways.

Work need not be boring and while we all know how exciting multifamily can be, it can become tedious at times. Pay attention to your teams and you’ll notice when they are in a bit of a rut.  Use games to help pump them up and keep everyone excited about coming to work.

We enjoyed this article on gaming and you may find additional ideas here- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204294504576615371783795248.html.  However, keep in mind this painfully true quote from the article, “Adding gamification to the workplace drives performance but it doesn't make up for bad management. If you are a bad manager, gamification won't help you," says Kris Duggan, chief executive of game-maker Badgeville.”  

Good luck and good gaming

 

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Many in-touch companies have started incorporating gaming into their employee’s everyday activities as a way to provide engagement and excitement. Most have used gaming for training for some time but are now using the motivation benefits of games in everyday work life.