Gamification Mechanic Monday: Dashboard
In every game you will find a dashboard, which tracks your activities and progress. In business it is rare to see how we are doing and what the options are. Our progression on a career path is not usually tracked by levels, but it could be. Competency based organisations are already at an advantage in this respect, they could design levels based on evidence of mastery of a particular competence, like for example client relationship building within the level there could then be grades of achievement. Unfortunately for most of us, we only find out about our performance when it’s game over time.
Dashboard provide a quick overview of all relevant information to a player. From levels achieved to power and performance statistics, you can include as little or as much as you can find possible. The key is to track and show what you would like to stimulate, whether that is client retention, accuracy in data, on time delivery, on budget, attendance…. The list goes on and is only limited by what you find important.
Imagine attendance tracking where someone tracks your presence and holidays taken as opposed to your sickness and absence. Imagine projects completed, awards won, praise received…
It is powerful for most of us in a game world to see how we are doing just for ourselves and with social gaming there is the added bonus of peer pressure. In the world of business far too often, no openness exists about people’s performance, yet every organisation has some form of annual evaluation to endure, which nobody tends to like at all. HR dislikes the fact they have to hassle manager to complete them, managers dislike it because it is seen as a paper exercise and the employee often sees it as their one and only feedback moment, which really if you think about doesn’t drive performance at all.
If you make the dashboard readily available, focused on desired behaviour, relevant and up-to-date your organisation will achieve tangible performance, which employees can influence directly.
