Engagement – learning from Games

The developers of computer games are focused on creating and maintaining engagement. The longer players play, the better the game! Some of the ideas that can be used to help build team engagement in the workplace include:

• Recognising individual engagement is easier if there is a sense of collective engagement.
• Appealing to the emotions of both individuals and the group, encourage collaboration.
• Clearly show a players progress through ‘experience bars’ and similar.
• Provide multiple long and short term aims.
• Reward effort; provide graduated and scaled rewards.
• Provide rapid, frequent and clear feedback with windows of enhanced learning.
• Create an element of uncertainty, the occasional exceptional reward.

Use these elements wisely and engagement in you team may become almost addictive – games are!! For more on this topic see Tom Chatfield’s talk on TED