How to use gamification for events & employee engagement

What is gamification?

Gamification is changing everything from the way we work out and drink, to how we sleep or brush our teeth!

So what is gamification? It’s the process of taking ordinary tasks and activities and incorporating elements of game design into them. Because gamification can be used to drive engagement and motivate people to take certain actions, it’s often used in marketing and customer engagement strategies, but can also be applied effectively to events.

Simply put, using points, levels, badges, leaderboards, and rewards, gamification tries to take the ordinary and make it more engaging and fun.

Does gamification work?

Yes! Studies have shown that gamification can increase engagement, reduce turnover and improve customer relationships.

It’s a great way to increase event attendee engagement that leads to perceived value and satisfaction, and research has demonstrated that gamification can also help increase employee satisfaction and increase motivation.

Gamification ideas for event engagement

Though it's becoming increasingly popular across the board, gamification in events is a relatively new concept, so here are a few tips on how to use it effectively in events:

1. Create challenges that encourage attendees to complete tasks, like completing profiles or networking with others
2. Offer an appealing prize. Give participants an incentive to play. It doesn't have to be a luxurious or expensive prize, but give something that would be relevant and valuable to the person participating. Sponsors are often a great resource to provide prizes as well.
3. Make the game or challenge intuitive and simple. Choose something that is easy to learn and rewarding to engage with. A virtual photo booth is a great way to engage people both in-person and virtually, requiring only a QR code and a mobile device for attendees to participate.
4. Share results often to encourage participation. One great way to increase engagement is to keep track of the participants’ progress. For example, you can use a leaderboard or leader wall to show the top players’ scores and the rewards they have earned. A Social Wall is another great way to leverage engagement to drive more participation.

Most of the time, we associate events with the external: customers, content, lead generation, and so on, all produced to say something to people outside our company. But gamification can be used at internal events just as easily as a way to engage and reward employees.

Gamification ideas for employee engagement

1. Leaderboards: Employees can track their performance against other team members and to drive healthy competition and motivation.
2. Challenges and Quizzes: Boost engagement by hosting regular quizzes and competitions that may also increase awareness around products or company causes.
3. Badges and Rewards: Create custom badges to reward employees for their accomplishment and encourage them to continue participating.
4. Incentivized Learning: Offer incentives and rewards for completing training sessions or courses.
5. Level-Up Systems: Encourage users to reach the next level and earn rewards for doing so.
6. Social Networking: Employees, understandably, don’t want to be pressured to mix their personal social media with work. Because of that, creating isolated, internal networking opportunities can encourage employees to connect with each other and share ideas with no risk to their privacy. A social wall paired with user-generated video is a great way to achieve this!

There are plenty of different ways to implement gamification, but for it to be successful it should be customized to fit the event, company, or team, and needs to feel intuitive for people to engage.

If you’re interested but having trouble coming up with the best implementation, feel free to contact us to talk about ideas!