Gamification, the adoption of gaming elements into non-game environments, can be a powerful tool in the world of sales. For example, adding virtual leaderboards, prizes and incentives to a sales competition can be a great motivator to drive performance in your company’s employees.
The benefits are clear. Gamification can help focus team efforts on delivering on targets. And offering performance-based incentives gives recognition for hard work and can even boost the levels of dopamine(that feel-good chemical) in team members.
On the flip side, as with all sales competitions—particularly those that drive a feel-good buzz when winning—it’s important to find balance so as to not push team members to burnout.
Below, we outline four effective ways to leverage gamification while avoiding employee burnout.
- Space out your sales competitions. Finding down-time in the calendar helps make sure your team members don’t get overwhelmed by relentless sales competitions. You can also set time limits on competitions so that work is only done during working hours and not taken home.
- Offer vacation rewards to employees. Even if your company has unlimited PTO, it’s likely that employees are not taking enough time-off. Having one of the prizes for your competitions be time-off or(if you have the budget) a paid vacation is a brilliant incentive that will, by its very nature, help to avoid employee burnout.
- Coaching is key. With many people still working from home, the Zoom fatigue is real, so it’s easy to see why team members would want to“push out a call” or cancel video catchups entirely. Leveraging coaching tools can help you keep track of meetings, surface performance data, and oversee action items without the need for daily video calls. You can monitor how employees are performing, highlight what they're doing great, and assess the things that are giving them problems. And with weekly(rather than daily) video check-ins you can gauge employee frustrations and their risk of burnout.
- Run just-for-fun competitions. After so long apart, using competitions is a great way to drive team bonding. Creating fun challenges—whether that’s some kind of physical activity or a book reading competition—doing non-work related activities together helps create that camaraderie that we’ve all been missing while WFH. Gamified activities that aren’t screen-based and that can be completed during commuting or work hours are particularly effective in avoiding burnout.
If you’re interested in how SalesScreen can help you effectively use gamification without pushing your team towards burnout, click here to request a demo!