Gamification helped deliver a 300% improvement for this consultant’s client

A year ago Foursquare shocked users by announcing it would phase out awarding points and badges on its popular check-in app. The move appeared to signal the death knell for gamification.

But the concept endures, and has found new traction among the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies who are using it as a tool to keep employees more engaged, according to a Canadian expert.

“If you want employees to be more productive and show up to work more, you have to change their behavior and their mindset,” said Mitchell Osak, the founder of Toronto-based business strategy firm Quanta Consulting Inc., in a recent web-chat with the Conference Board of Canada.

And adding a simple leaderboard can have a major transformation on work culture. That’s what Osak said he implemented at a major software developer to help offset the boredom and dissatisfaction experienced by workers responsible for bug testing, a task Osak described as the “bottom of the IT barrel.”

Turning the chore into a game created an “esprit de corps,” said Osak, that resulted in employees finding 300 percent more bugs in a third of the time as before.

Osak said gamification taps into “fundamental human psychological drivers” such as the need to relate to our peers and the desire for mastery and status. All of these elements exist in the simplest video games, which are played by about half of all adults, according to Osak.

“People have been playing games for more than 10,000 years, so we’re really not doing anything different,” he added. “We’re just leveraging anthropology and new technology and the proven precepts from the video game industry.”

So far these tools have been used mostly in the public realm: to drive consumers to brands, with the notion that they will be more likely to come back if the initial experience is pleasurable. Osak said the same techniques that have been applied to consumers are now being turned on employees to make work more fun. Even job evaluations have been gamified to make the process less painful. Employers benefit from having less sick days and a more engaged and productive staff, he said.

Over the last four years, more than 350 companies in the United states have launched gamification projects and annual revenues are expected to top $2 billion by 2015, according to a study by Santa Fe, California-based M2 Research.

“The terrific thing about gamification is that it allows us to have a new conversation with business leaders,” said Osak, who also said he anticipates its adoption growing considerably in 2014. “It’s not something I would consider faddish, as it’s generated some real compelling value for a lot of organizations.”

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The research opportunity: This presentation from GDC Europe offers more insight into the gamification of software bug testing and QA.

The commercialization potential: Check out Mitchell’s columns on the Financial Post which offer insights into the way businesses are using gamification.

The next thing you should read on CommerceLab: What the Wall Street Journal gets wrong about gamification