When Work Becomes a GameA) What motivates employees to do their jobs well? Competition with coworkers, for some. Thepromise of rewards, for others. Pure enjoyment of problem-solving, for a lucky few.B) Increasingly, companies are tapping into these desires directly through what has come to be knownas "gamification" : essentially, turning work into a game. "Gamification is about understandingwhat it is that makes games engaging and what game designers do to create a great experience ingames, and taking those learnings and applying them to other contexts such as the workplace andeducation," explains Kevin Werbach, a gamification expert who teaches at the Wharton School ofBusiness at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.C) It might mean monitoring employee productivity on a digital leaderboard and offering prizes to thewinner, or giving employees digital badges or stars for completing certain activities. It could alsomean training employees how to do their jobs through video game platforms. Companies fromGoogle to L'Oréalto IBM to Wells Fargo are known to use some degree of gamification in theirworkplaces. And more and more companies are joining them. A recent report suggests that theglobal gamification market will grow from $1.65 billion in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2020.D) The concept of gamification is not entirely new, Werbach says. Companies, marketers and teachershave long looked for fun ways to engage people's reward-seeking or competitive spirits. Cracker Jackshas been "gamifying" its snack food by putting a small prize inside for more than 100 years, headds, and the turn-of-the-century steel magnate (巨头) Charles Schwab is said to have often comeinto his factory and written the number of tons of steel produced on the past shift on the factoryfloor, thus motivating the next shift of workers to beat the previous one.E) But the word "gamification" and the widespread, conscious application of the concept only beganin earnest about five years ago, Werbach says. Thanks in part to video games, the generation nowentering the workforce is especially open to the idea of having their work gamified. "We are at apoint where in much of the developed world the vast majority of young people grew up playingvideo games, and an increasingly high percentage of adults play these video games too," Werbachsays.F) A number of companies have sprung up--GamEffective, Bunchbail and Badgeville, to name a few--in recent years offering gamification platforms for businesses. The platforms that are most effectiveturn employees' ordinary job tasks into part of a rich adventure narrative. "What makes a gamegame-like is that the player actually cares about the outcome," Werbach says. "The principle isabout understanding what is motivating to this group of players, which requires some understandingof psychology. "G) Some people, Werbach says, are motivated by competition.Sales people often fall into thiscategory. For them, the right kind of gamification might be turning their saies pitches into acompetition with other team members, complete with a digital leaderboard showing who is winningat all times. Others are more motivated by collaboration and social experiences. One companyWerbach has studied uses gamification to create a sense of community and boost employees' morale(士气). When employees log in to their computers, they're shown a picture of one of theircoworkers and asked to guess that person's name.H) Gamification does not have to be digital. Monica Cornetti runs a company that gamifies employeetrainings. Sometimes this involves technology, but often it does not. She recently designed agamification strategy for a saies training company with a storm-chasing theme. Employees formed"storm chaser teams" and competed in storm-themed educational exercises to earn variousrewards. "Rewards do not have to be stuff," Cornetti says. "Rewards can be flexible workinghours. " Another training, this one for pay roll law, used a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfstheme. "Snow White" is available for everyone to use, but the "dwarfs" are still under copyright,so Cornetti invented sound-alike characters (Grumpy Gus, Dopey Dan) to illustrate specific pay rolllaw principles.I) Some people do not take naturaily to gamified work environments, Cornetti says.In herexperience, people in positions of power or people in finance or engineering do not tend to like thesound of the word. "If we are designing for engineers, I'm not talking about a ' game' at all,"Cornetti says. "I'm talking about a ' simulation' (模拟), I'm talking about ' being able to solvethis problem. '"J) Gamification is " not a magic bullet," Werbach warns.A gamification strategy that is notsufficiently thought through or well tailored to its players may engage people for a little while, but itwill not motivate people in the long term. It can also be exploitative, especially when used withvulnerable populations. For workers, especially low-paid workers, who desperately need their jobsyet know they can be easily replaced, gamification may feel more like the Hunger Games. Werbachgives the example of several Disneyland hotels in Anaheim, Caiifornia, which used large digital leaderboards to display how efficiently laundry workers were working compared to one another.Some employees found the board motivating. To others, it was the opposite of fun. Some began tostop taking bathroom breaks, worried that if their productivity fell they would be fired. Pregnantemployees struggled to keep up. In a Los Angeles Times article, one employee referred to the boardas a "digital whip. ""It actually had a very negative effect on morale and performance," Werbachsays.K) Still, gamification only stands to become more popular, he says, "as more and more people comeinto the workforce who are familiar with the structures and expressions of digitai games. ""We arefar from reaching the peak," Cornetti agrees. "There is no reason this will go away. There is reason to believe that gamification will be here to stay.