Gamification is hot, also for CSR

Globally, people spend 3 billion hours per week on gaming. And what do people do with those other billions of hours? That’s right: working. Gaming has become more and more integrated into work. Almost half of the German employees are playing games during working hours, with an average percentage for CEOs and CFOs at even 61% (Reinecke, 2009). It seems that gaming is a powerful tool for involving employees. Games provide a sense of productivity and control. How could you translate these insights into something beneficial for your company, for instance CSR? The booming trend that is dealing with this, is Gamification.

Software developers such as SAP and Salesforce are working on gamification with their innovation teams. Many of the innovations are focused on a gamification of internal processes, to adjust mechanisms to influence behavior. The results so far are cost reductions of 10%, increased revenues of 7% and 15% higher quality of internal data. The positive side effect is the fun factor for employees.

Gamification is focusing on our internal drivers. It influences our intrinsic motivations, such as status, performance, competition and altruism. Returning topics are: challenges, direct positive feedback on actions, levels, rankings, scores etc. How could you use these gaming techniques to motivate employees and achieve sustainability goals? SAP already designed an internal game platform for CSR and retail giant Walmart used gaming techniques in their ‘My Sustainability Plan’.

Keep an eye on the term gamification and learn from it. How would you use games to activate employees to start working on the company’s sustainability goals?

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