Have you heard of gamification? 

As a kid, one of my favorite ways to learn was to make a game out of it. Be it a string of fun words to help me remember the names of rivers or a funny tune to help me remember numbers, Learning was definitely easier when I made up a little game to help me through it. For some, this habit stayed with us well into adulthood. Don’t believe me? Take a look around. There is a reason why workplaces around the globe are experimenting with Gamification.

Using a fun or “play’ aspect of learning is neither contemporary nor innovative. It has been used for centuries in schools across the globe. Bringing this into the workplace has been a recent trend to drive engagement of employees for learning. To put it simply, gamification at work simply amplifies an employee’s learning experience by using motivational tools and techniques that make the process more interesting.

Future… not so perfect. 

But as fun and as optimistic as it may sound, gamification isn’t quite as practical as you’d expect it to be… yet.

According to Gartner, there is more than one reason why gamification fails.

1. Lack of right strategy: The lack of the right kind of strategy often encourages employees to achieve only specific goals. Not equipped to identify and analyze all possible success factors, gamification models often fail to encourage the right way forward.

2. Loose Connection to Business objectives: Without proper planning and practices in place, gamification might have little to do with your business needs. Gamification primarily focuses on driving engagement but does little to help your business even if it is a lot of fun to engage with.

3. Personalization & Sustainenece: Gamification has been known only to succeed when it has been directed to a specific group of employees with specific goals to achieve. While they have been great to jump-start learning, they absolutely failed to sustain them over a period of time.

Though game mechanics have been proven to impact employee psychology positively, it isn’t surprising that people are yet to fully embrace it as a part of their regular work lives. Because it makes it is difficult to apply any skills learned through playing games in their actual jobs. You see, even though gamification can make boring processes a lot of fun, it doesn’t do much to drive business values by upskilling employees on skills relevant to the growth of your business.

So how important is gamification to your organization? Consider if there is actual value in gamified learning solutions you choose.

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