Gamification as a Rewards Systems (?)

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

I’ve not really been following the whole “gamification” topic over the last few years but perhaps I should have been.   There are some interesting things happening in the space right now.

John Dodge points to the use of a gamification program at Fedex called the “Fedex Badge”. This program is a rewards program that is defined by John as the following:

The gamification program rewards and reinforces sharing through The Fedex Badge program. Ideally, it starts with engagement, moves to adoption and then goes viral. The benefits are:

— Identifies key knowledge holders and encourages sharing.

— Applies and grows relevance to subject matters.

— Facilitates adoption of new features and user experience elements.

— Motivates individuals to complete training and enhanced skill building programs.

— Promotes appreciation and pride in one’s accomplishments.

— Allows for tracking and analytics of compliance and usage.

Interesting. The Fedex Badge gamification program rewards people for sharing knowledge and collaborating.

Interesting concept for sure. One of the key failures in most knowledge management systems is that people must share knowledge for that KM system to work as it should.  Perhaps a gamification approach might help.

This got me thinking….would a rewards system built around sharing information / knowledge work in IT?  Think about IT professionals…many are gamers. Many are into the rewards from achieving too.

So…if you could build a gamification platform as a rewards platform for IT professionals to share knowledge within IT and outside of IT, do you think it would work?

I think it would. Granted, it would depend on the culture of the organization and IT group, but if designed correctly, there might be  some real value here. By delivering some tangible rewards to your staff for sharing knowledge and building knowledge, you just might find you no longer have a knowledge vacuum around certain parts of the IT organization. Expand this idea throughout the rest of the organization and that knowledge vacuum might go away completely.

What do you think?

Image Credit: New Game 🙂 What does a Scrabble game you played in tell about yourself? By garlandcannon on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.