Gamification is the addition of game design elements to non-game systems, and it’s everywhere these days. From language learning apps that measure your progress with experience points to fitness trackers that give you trophies for achieving wellness goals, gamification is a reliable tool for stoking engagement. Humans have played games for millennia to satisfy our desire for achievement, competition and community. Modern ideas of game elements might feel like they belong to the world of computers and mobile apps but with a little creativity, you can easily apply these principles to your workplace.
Game design elements encourage participation and they can make safety fun. Options include a recognition system for workers who report near misses or track participation points when employees contribute safety stories during toolbox talks. You can give out badges for purposeful habit building, or set up a leaderboard for folks who consistently back into parking spaces.
In the gaming world, a “power-up” is something positive—like a new ability or an extra life—awarded to the player to boost their capabilities when facing a game’s challenges. That same concept can be applied when gamifying the workplace. Here are some power-up suggestions and pro tips to amplify the safety benefits of gamification.
Power-up 1: Common language
Games have a wonderful ability to create a common language out of abstract concepts. It’s one of the key ways in which a game engine functions: taking math, probability, social interactions, objectives and artwork, then translating them into words players can use to easily communicate with teammates and opponents. Board games are great examples of this. When you play Monopoly with your family, you adopt the common language of real estate and the geography of Atlantic City to collect the most money and property (which are the common language for points).
These same language principles that facilitate games can be used in the world of safety. Danger thrives in states of ambiguity, which can emerge from a lack of common language. When everyone understands and uses the same terms to describe slips, trips and falls, it’s easier to register what a person is talking about when they describe a near miss or a hazard that needs attention. This is especially true of less tangible safety concerns like human factors, which manifest internally as physical feelings and emotions.
Naming something gives us the power to identify and respond to it. In human factors management, this equates to understanding how states like rushing or fatigue can give rise to errors. If you are using gamified processes in your workplace, try adding in an element that incorporates explicitly identifying human factors by name. This can be the boost workers need to get familiar with how human factors influence their behavior and have them start using a common language to discuss these intangible risk multipliers.
Power-up 2: Critical paths and engagement
Games can be played competitively, cooperatively and alone. But regardless of the number of players and their relationships to each other, games all have one thing in common: a critical path. For games to progress, certain tasks need to be completed in a specific order. Arcade gamers need to push the buttons that make Mario jump over barrels and climb girders in order to reach the villainous Donkey Kong; Clue players need to roll the dice, move their token, gather evidence and propose who killed Mr. Body; a Dungeons & Dragons party needs to follow a turn order and interact with a game master for a narrative to progress.
The concept of a critical path in games is derived from the Critical Path Method in project management, which prioritizes and schedules activities and tasks based on how essential they are in completing a project at the lowest cost in the shortest amount of time. A number of non-essential things might happen during a project or a game, but there are the bare minimum requirements that need to be met for progress to happen. You have to spin the spinner, you have to draw the cards, you have to move the joystick. As famous video game designer Cliff Bleszinski often puts it: games require engagement at every single beat.
And it’s the natural element of engagement that comes with games that makes them great for safety. We know it’s tough to get folks excited about being safe, but by incorporating safety elements like catching people working safely or tracking positive habit building into the critical path of a gamified process, you are giving workers the power-up they need to actively mitigate risk. Points don’t go up on their own, but this power-up can give workers what it takes to score big in the area of participation.
Pro-tip: Avoiding a game over
As beneficial as games are when it comes to building a common language and encouraging engagement, they aren’t entirely positive on their own. It’s important to keep an eye on the human factors that can arise from gamified processes, safety-based or not. Competition can cause frustration and rushing. And while the habit-building nature of games can help encourage safe behavior, game design elements can be addictive and distracting.
Even when gamified work processes aren’t competitive, they can cause undue stress. New research from West Virginia University (WVU) shows that, while gamified manufacturing tasks improve productivity, they come with an increased “psychological load.”
“We expected gamification would lessen participants’ perceived workloads,” explained researcher and WVU industrial engineer Makenzie Dolly in a press release. “Instead, it increased the frustration, effort, time pressure, and mental and physical demands they reported experiencing.”
Dolly recommends designing gamification applications with workers’ personalities and tolerance for stress in mind. After all, playing games takes more energy than not, and in the era of burnout, they could cause unnecessary levels of fatigue in your workforce.
Games are a great way to get workers engaging with safety, but be careful not to overdo it. When human factors come into play, things can get risky. Make sure any gamification in your workplace is implemented alongside human factors training. That way you can level up your productivity while avoiding hazards that could lead to a game over.