Articol de: Alexandra Cernian – Lecturer, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers
A recent survey conducted by Gallup shows that ,globally, 70% of employees are not engaged at their job. Moreover, a research conducted by Deloitte reveals that over 87% of HR managers and professionals are facing an increasing lack of engagement of employees.
Why are employees different nowadays?
The Gallup survey shows that only 30% of global employees are engaged at work. In Europe, the engagement of employees is also very low. On average, only 16% of employees are engaged in the activities they perform at work, 68% are not involved, while 24% are actively unengaged and publicly expressing their complains. According to Gallup estimates, the latter may have a significant negative impact at organizational level, generating losses of billions of euros to the economy.
The data becomes even more relevant if we look at the generations segmentation: the degree of engagement in Millenials is only 29%, while in Generation X and Boomers 33%. Millenials and Generation X grew up with the Internet, games and social media and they expect to be ble to use the same tools in their professional activities. Although until recently, the financial benefits were the primary means of motivating employees, a recent study conducted by Sodexo has shown that 69% of Millennials believe that the main factor in the performance of organizations worldwide is the quality of life of employees. Numerous studies agree that this generation values are related to flexibility, entertainment and personal development.
What can be done to increase the level of engagement?
In this social context, traditional methods of motivating employees become depricated and less successful. Companies are forced to focus on innovative approaches, adapted to the psychological profile of the new generations.
One of the most succesful modern instruments for increasing the engagement level of employees is gamification, which has already been implemented in large multinational companies such as Google, Deloitte and Cisco. Gamification means integrating gaming concepts and elements into organizational processes, from recruiting, training and development to increasing the motivation and engagement levels of employees. Here are some examples of companies that improved their performance by implementing gamification:
- SAP: they implemented a gamification system for SAP Community Network that led to a 400% increase in the utilization degree and a 96% increase of feedback
- Google: they implemented gamification their travel expenses system, reaching 100% compliance from their employees
- Deloitte: they gamified their training system, reducing by 50% the employees’ completion time and significantly increasing their involvment in the programs
- Ford: they gamifies the learning portal if the employees and increased by 100% the number of activities/user withing only 5 weeks
