BY: Nick Bornheimer, Manager, Strategic Accounts, Allsteel
We all function within some faction of a reward system. Cleaning your home or running an errand can feel cumbersome and even daunting at times. But it inarguably feels rewarding once the task is completed. An added motivation to earn points (even if it’s simply brownie points with your partner or roommate) makes the task less painful to take on. The same is true in competition—finding the time and inspiration for exercise or physical fitness proves difficult for many, but if calories burned and steps taken are tracked through an app and moved onto a dashboard where you can see the weekly progress of friends, you might find an extra gear during that last mile of your run.
That first example is a more nuanced portrait of the human condition, but the second is a prime example of what is commonly and popularly referred to as gamification. Earning virtual badges, banners…or even bragging rights among friends is a driver that may seem frivolous. That is, until you try it. The genesis of gamification dates back to the 1980s (although some trace elements of the theory back to the 19th century) when game designer and philosopher Thomas Malone considered the idea of using games to incentivize the completion of everyday tasks and real-world problems. The term was later coined by Nick Pelling, an inventor and computer programmer.
Turning anything into a game can tap into a motivation that did not exist prior. You can find countless examples of gamification in everyday life–online shopping, educational curriculum, and more recently, in elements of the workplace. CoreNet New York City had the pleasure of speaking with Coby Skonord, founder and CEO at Ideawake, and expert in the field of innovation management solutions. Coby helps us distill how the implementation of gamification in the office works, where the advantages are, and more intriguingly, if this tool to help the menial become more memorable might bring about some negative or unintended results. More or less, can gamification be “gamed?”
For the better part of a decade, Coby Skonard has led the team at Ideawake, helping design three innovation platforms being used by companies to power their employee improvement and innovation programs in over 39 countries and 185 cities (Skonard notes that number is now likely closer to 300). His focus includes managing the company’s internal and external growth strategy and overseeing the launch of digital innovation programs for organizations in over 14 verticals including healthcare, financial services, hospitality, and manufacturing.
From a work tactical point of view, Ideawake helps organizations efficiently tap into the biggest asset most organizations often overlook—the wisdom of their workforce. This means capturing, evaluating, and implementing the five percent of ideas that will drive 95 percent of new business results. Gamification plays an integral role in this vision.
Q: Where was the idea for Ideawake born?
The original inception of Ideawake was something I started in 2013. My background is in accounting and finance, that’s what my degree is in. Graduated, got a job at Ernst & Young. Put in my two-weeks’ notice on the first day and decided to start this. We’re
a software-as-a-service platform that allows you to facilitate a process for capturing ideas and then moving those ideas through different processes to evaluate them, action them, and measure their impact on them. Broadly speaking, it’s called an idea management or innovation management platform. So when we use gamification, we look at when users perform value-added actions—specifically end users—on the platform. Posting ideas, commenting, receiving upvotes. They earn points, which aggregate onto a leaderboard,
and we also have prizes that are incorporated. The main purpose is to help improve adoption, participation, and the overall initiatives.
Q: Should companies or employees be at all wary of gamification? Can it create a negative office culture impact or be seen as manipulative?
I think there is mostly upside. I’ll have the occasional customer who wants [gamification features] turned off, which can easily be done. The main reason you’ll see pushback is because gamification does not support a company’s corporate culture. There’s likely another reason, but I’m not sure that we’re getting the full picture and think they
are misunderstanding the intent. For the folks that are detractors—at least for us— we say there really is no harm in enabling gamification. There might be worrying that
people will game the system and that could have negative, unintended consequences causing animosity in the office. So while that could be a downside, I think those types of activities will happen anyway. Meaning, if people just focus on climbing the leaderboard, and it doesn’t correlate to more productivity, it should be discovered rather quickly.
For us, people receive points as others upvote their ideas. People can go around and campaign for votes, I guess, but that would be rare. Also, a lot of folks use the voting system as a leading indicator—not actually to make decisions. But overall if you come onto the system, you’re more likely to do value-added activity. So even if people try to game the system, we’re still uncovering key metrics, and adoption is increased. If that were being used as the sole decision criteria for whether or not to implement an idea, meaning it had a material impact if people gamed the system for things being prioritized, then that would be an issue.
Q: So you feel that the potential consequences do not outweigh what can be yielded by the adoption of gamification?
Yes. Exactly. And more than anything, it’s making sure that the system is designed correctly. Then there really is no downside. Are the right tasks being incentivized? Are there barriers in place to avoid people from taking advantage of the system? If those two things are true, there is no harm…only upside.
Q: What is the process for determining if the correct tasks are being incentivized? You work with multiple companies in varying verticals. Does that part ever become complicated?
For us it’s easy. Regardless of industry, client size, et cetera…the activities that you want to incentivize are typically the same. What are the outcomes that you want? Pretend that the gamification system doesn’t exist–what do you want to do? Say [a client] wants to
increase sales; how do you increase sales? What are the tasks and activities that increase
sales? Often very simple stuff—increasing the number of sales calls, improving follow-up rate, or whatever it might be. And then, it might take one, two, or three levels diving down to get to the root of how these activities are truly increased. And if you have too many tasks, then you stack rank them, and from there you only incentivize the 20 percent of tasks that give you 80 percent of the results.
Q: That seems to be a theme for your overall strategy. Uncover and collect a smaller number of great ideas that help drive most of the productivity. How did this become so important to your platform’s growth?
By accident. We pivoted the company twice which is how we eventually arrived here. Originally it was focused on helping entrepreneurs validate their ideas–entrepreneurs don’t have any money, enterprise does. We took the same technology and then applied it internally and launched it inside larger companies. That’s how we got here.We work in more than 14 different verticals now. We’ll focus a little more as time goes on, but the applicability and how [the platform] might range somewhat across different verticals. How people login in a manufacturing environment will, of course, be different than how a group would login in a technology environment. But how the system functions, and what you’re doing once you figure out some of the implementation, is all the same.
Q. Have you had anyone ask about or entertain the idea of gamification to encourage morefolks to work from the office as opposed to remotely?
I haven’t seen anyone try to gamify [the return to work], although not necessarily a bad idea. It’s usually just a top-down mandate like “This is what we’re doing.” And that hasn’t really
worked—pretty much everyone is back to some version of hybrid. It would be interesting to try to see it gamified. If done the right way, maybe something to consider.
