What do Angry Birds and sustainability have in common?
Playing Angry Birds hooks people, focusing them on developing special skills to achieve ever more difficult goals. That type of game-playing can be a central tool to help companies get their employees involved in delivering on firm-wide sustainability goals from zero waste to greening the supply chain.
“Innovative companies are using gamification to re-image work and drive unprecedented engagement across the entire organization,” according to JP Rangaswami, keynote speaker for upcoming Gamification Summit being held in San Francisco June 19-21. This is increasingly true for one of business’ top issues – sustainability.
93% of business leaders identified sustainability as important to their company’s future success, according to a recent survey. They are just looking for ways to make it work. Gamification is one answer.
Playing electronic games is addictive. It hooks people at the level of their basic social drives for achievement, appreciation, reciprocity, and friendly competition. It grabs attention on social media and speeds up companies’ sustainability processes. In business, people compete individually and in teams for points, prizes, and recognition. They become engaged and motivated.
For example, companies using CloudApps’ gamification tools to engage employees in corporate sustainability efforts can save up to 10% on their annual costs of energy, water, waste and business travel, improving their ROI in less than six months.
Seven gamification strategies to increase employee engagement in sustainability
CloudApps has shared the roadmap it uses with corporate clients:
1. Align employees’ personal sustainability goals with corporate sustainability vision and goals
2. Visibly allocate and reward in connection with sustainability budgets and targets
3. Bring a fun, innovative and competitive approach through the use of game mechanics that includes challenges, badges, levels, rewards and leader boards
4. Deliver practical sustainability challenges relevant to an employee’s experience
5. Bring a social networking style of collaboration and communication that drives successful employee-led sustainability initiatives
6. Harvest employees sustainability and cost reduction ideas
7. Create a workplace ethic that attracts and retains the very best employees
Photo of Angry Birds coaching by Nick Chill Photography via a Flickr Creative Commons license./
Next page: How companies employ these strategies
