Workforce Management Featured Article

Workforce Management Made Easier with Gamification

While conventional wisdom tells us that an engaged employee is an effective employee, it’s a little more difficult than issuing a memo and telling employees, “Be engaged.” Workforce management involves the task of motivating employees – and that means first conquering a lot of roadblocks. Some employees are easier to motivate than others (such as sales people, who work on commission and therefore have a financial incentive to be engaged).

According to, “Its No Game: Gamification is transforming the Contact Center,” released last year by CITO Research, contact center staff members are some of the most cynical people in any organization. There’s a fairly good reason: contact center work is low-paid, high-stress and repetitive, and these workers hear more complaints than any other employee. Even in companies that try hard to keep contact center staff happy, the turnover can be higher than anyone would like. In companies that treat their employees like a commodity, turnover can reach 100 percent per year.

Both research and anecdotal evidence tell us that an effective, empowered employee is more likely to be an engaged employee. Given the nature of contact center work, however, companies simply can’t afford to spend months boosting confidence and skills in a classroom setting, and they cannot afford to pull existing employees off the queues in order to hold cheerleading sessions.

Yes, you can have the pizza party on Friday, but are they dragging their feet again by Wednesday? The truth of human nature is that people become motivated when there’s something in the task for them. It may not necessarily be related to money: it might be a feeling of power, the satisfaction of helping someone or a chance to “win.” But how do you “win” at contact center work?

Forward-thinking companies are adopting a valuable workforce management and training idea called “gamification,” which involves putting the mechanics of video games to work in business applications. Employees might use the solutions to learn new information or carry out their day-to-day duties, but while doing so, they earn badges, score virtual points, or ascend through the levels. They might be represented by avatars and compete with other employees. However the gamified solution is configured, employees, particularly those in the contact center, respond to it.

Image via Shutterstock.

“Gamification works because it addressed the motivations and desires in all of us, including the need for community, for feedback, for achievement and for rewards,” according to the CITO white paper, which notes that these concepts aren’t new: they have been around since the first company launched an employee-of-the-month award. “Gamification takes this to a new level, leveraging the data generated by your agents combined with the latest understanding of what motivates people and the data-driven motivational techniques from video games to empower your business with a new engine for driving engagement, participating and meaningful business results.”

In plain English, gamified learning or business applications are simply more fun than other methods. They allow the agents to strive, to compete and to win in a way that most applications simply don’t. They offer immediate feedback, visual comparison and effective learning, all rolled into one package. For companies that tie success in gamified applications to real rewards (gift certificates, first-choice of vacation time or a primo parking spot), it adds an element of good-spirited competition and real achievement. It has also become one of the most effective tools in workforce management and for keeping employees engaged on a day-to-day basis.