We live in a challenging time, where many businesses and individuals are in a fight to survive, caused by circumstance and not by their own action. To achieve the same as before will take more effort and diligence; a time where new ways of working, motivating and engaging are key to a business’s ongoing success.

People are the key to any business, their skills and experience and importantly their motivation and mindset. Keeping employees engaged and driven in a time of increased pressure and stress is a challenge and 2020 has certainly enhanced that criteria.

Sales is hard enough, with a customer’s decision based on a multitude of factors; a common competitor being lethargy to do anything. Recruitment is harder! In the sale of a product or service once a customer is convinced on selecting to spend with you, bar the final contractual to’s and fro’s, your job is pretty much done. In recruitment the added challenge is that the candidate (the product you are selling) can change its mind of where it wants to go! You have two customers to support and close; the client and the candidate. Both have to make the same buying decision in order for your sale to come together. This means 2 sets of selling activities to execute and track and all focus is on the people element.

What can you do to drive the correct repeatable behaviours of your recruitment team, to motivate and engage them in a time when much of their time may be spent remotely. This is where getting your game face on can re-energise the team coming out of 2020, introduce more engagement and fun and kick start 2021 with the drive it needs to put 2020 behind us.

‘89% report that when a specific task is gamified, they feel competitive and eager to complete it’  (TalentLMS’s 2019 Gamification at Work survey)

Gamification is a concept which uses game theory, mechanics, and game designs to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve goals; be they their own, those of their supplier or those of their own organisation.

So why should you care, what can it bring to you and your recruitment business? Do you care about driving greater results? Want to gain more focus on the right activities that drive placements? Want to reward your team for the right efforts and behaviours and have them self-motivate towards higher efforts and achievements? If NONE of this is of interest please do stop reading now. BUT if any of this resonates and post COVID you have a need for greater engagement for your recruitment team working remotely, perhaps in a more challenging market than we had prior, then I have some easy learnings for you!

‘68% of recruiting professionals say that the best way to improve recruiting performance over the next 5 years is by investing in new recruiting technology.’ Source: Linkedin’s Future of Recruiting Report

Thank you for sticking with me, so lets get you engaged with the realities of gamification and why it works…..  We live in a gamified world, a world where we are motivated and driven to engage and take action based on rewards and competitive comparison. This drives action and influences behaviour. It works because it aligns with the way the brain works. Getting a reward, even small, release dopamine, something that is ingrained in humans as an addictive feeling, this is the basis of motivation. Gamification is simply about communicating a reward to someone for a behaviour on a repeated basis to tell them they are on their way and are doing the right things. Habitually they will check in to see if doing well and repeat their actions to progress further.

As consumers we are all used to collecting reward points such as Nectar BPme and Starbucks for behaviours and actions such as buying certain products, filling in surveys, a friend’s recommended signup or an activity such as a login to a membership portal, etc

Experienced self-gamification? Have a Fitbit? A device that drives you to be more active and rewards you individually with positive feedback on reaching certain levels and goals; how many times do you check it to see how you are doing!? Health itself is becoming gamified with the likes of Vitality rewarding members with points for exercising and keeping healthy that can be exchanged for gifts and experiences.

Even SatNav has become gamified! If you’re a Waze’r I am sure you will have at some point heard the phrase ‘King Wazer’; a goal you achieve through the earning of points based on mileage driven, reports contributed to the Waze community of traffic reports and other such actions. Waze has gamified and disrupted the map industry. In the same arena take Uber, where both driver and passenger are gamified by their mutual ratings of each other.

In the business world we are not immune; Salesforce’s Trailblazing community is a gamified learning platform, that for those in the Salesforce world becomes a badge of honour amongst peers. It successfully drives the behaviour to take more learning modules in order to gain more points and badges (such as Explorer up to Ranger).

Social Media is by definition gamified; people strive for followers, likes, views and shares with the most successful volume achievers of these often finding a lucrative influencer role where they get paid for their shares and promotion for others. Facebook has gamification at its core; get drawn to come back repeatedly and to take actions, that’s gamification driving literally billions of users to logon to its platform every day!

‘Employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%)  and happier (88%) at work’ (TalentLMS’s 2019 Gamification at Work survey)

Tying gamification to your business goals is key; as a recruiter this at the simplest level is placement of candidates into paying roles. However, contributing to this are a breadth of good behaviours and activities on a repeated basis such as calls made, meetings booked for candidates, CV’s sent, first interview arranged, candidates added, job roles added, 2^nd interviews, etc.  Sales is a numbers game, but of productivity (the right amount of the right activity) not purely activity for activity sake. Gamification can drive these ‘right’ activities in the right mix and visibility reward the individual and team for behaviours that lead to results.

Gamification works for us all, as evidenced in the general consumer world. It particularly works well for those with a sales persona, those who thrive to an added level on competition and results driven outcomes. By re-enforcing positive behaviours with that dopamine hit, we incentivise the actions (that drive the outcome) to become habitual and this drives individuals past the avoidance of avoided chores such as admin, as these form part of the gamification process. (This is called using operant conditioning to meet business objectives). Managers define a set of smaller milestones with positive associated payoffs that combine to the greater goal for the individual and business.

Gamification also opens up sales data to drive growth, sharing of best practices and motivation of those not at the top of the performance leader board. The same human who you employ for your recruiter role is actively participating and having their behaviours motivated using gamification today through online gaming, reward cards, devices such as FitBits and more. Why should you not be utilising the same simple motivational methods to gain the desired business outcomes? A recruiter doing more of the right thing will be more successful. This benefits themselves as well as your organisation and those around them. A more engaged, fun and driven sales environment drives greater work satisfaction, retention and success.

‘Sales were improved by 56.4% at Hewlett Packard when they used Gamification (Project Everest) to reward reseller teams with related prizes’ Source Hewlett Packard

To One Up Your team for a stronger 2021, engage with us on a free consultative call, request at https://www.oneupsales.co.uk