Note: Today’s post is part of our “Editor’s Choice” series where we highlight recent posts published by our sponsors that provide supply chain insights and advice. This article comes from Ben Smeland, Senior Software Engineer, at Lucas Systems, and looks at gamification in the warehouse.
While labor woes are spurring many organizations to accelerate their efforts in exploring automation and technology, one rather interesting, and somewhat outside the norm area of technology that shows potential, and is being used by some organizations such as Amazon to enhance employee engagement and retention is gamification.
Gamification is defined as “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity,” in this case, work. While maybe not top of mind for many DC operators in terms of priority technology investments, based on some recent survey results, it may be worth exploring. In a survey by talent lms, 81 percent of respondents said that gamification provided a sense of belonging and purpose in the workplace, while 89 percent of the respondents said gamification boosted competition and eagerness.
Gamification makes warehouse tasks interesting and employees more engaged. It’s a creative solution to the industry-wide challenge of hanging on to your warehouse employees through the current labor shortage. There are a number of ways to leverage gamification techniques to make typically repetitive tasks more interesting. Let’s look at some of those ways through the lens of the three pillars of gamification.
3 Pillars of Gamification
Because everyone is different in terms of their needs and motivations, gamification is not a one-size fits all solution. Blending a number of approaches that cover the components of motivation for each person can help you develop a successful model. That’s where the three main pillars of gamification come in: Personal Pride, Socialization and Competition.
The first, Personal Pride, is essentially, just the simple feel good elements of being acknowledged. Nobody competes for it and it can be just about the individual worker. It can include elements such as a prompt or message letting you know that you are doing better than the goal rates that have been set, or that you are tracking to set a personal best. In the case of personal best, it can even bring out a touch of the 3rd pillar, competition.
A laboratory experiment in which two gamification elements, goal setting and feedback, were implemented in a wearable warehouse management system (WMS) interface to examine their effect on user engagement and performance in an item picking task, concluded gamification can successfully increase employee engagement, at least in the short-term. The findings also showed that the integration of self-set goals and feedback game elements had the greatest potential to generate long-term intrinsic motivation and meaningful engagement, leading to greater employee engagement and performance.
To read the full article, click HERE.
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