Friendly Competition: Does It Belong In the Workplace?
By: Gráinne Logue
Tags: Productivity, Remote Work, Task Management, Gamification, Startups

Friendly Competition: Does It Belong In the Workplace?

You don’t have to get the boxing gloves out just yet, but a little bit of competition can have a big impact on team morale and productivity. I worked in telesales during college and friendly competition was the name of the game even back then. There was no way to miss the massive leadership board stuck on the wall as soon as you got to the office, just as there was no way to stop checking it every half hour to see if your name had moved up a line or two. It was addictive. Everyone wanted to win. It wasn’t just about the prizes (yep, there were prizes!), it was about the WIN. That feeling of being the best, even just for the day. Everyone wanted that, so everyone worked hard to get it, and of course, the company did even better as a result.

Where’s The “I” In “Team”?

The concept of wanting to win has a lot of self-discipline behind it. It has a lot of “self” behind it in general; self-determination, self-worth, self-improvement. So you might ask, where does the team fit in? Is someone who is driven by competition going to be a team player? Or will they knock everyone over on their way to the top? There is no straight answer on that as it’s really going to depend on the people you have working with you. Different personalities will be motivated by different things in different ways. Some people will be highly motivated in a competitive atmosphere, whereas others may get stressed and anxious depending on how it’s organized and the message you’re sending out.

But the real answer lies in the WAY the competition is being driven, and that’s where the recent success of companies adopting gamification in the workplace comes into the picture. Gamification introduces a necessary playful element to competition and it offers multiple opportunities for individual and team achievement rather than focusing on a few top performers. This boosts morale and encourages the team to work together so that everyone feels like they’re winning once they put the work in, whatever level they’re at.

Encourage Success, Not Stress

In his TEDxVilniusTalk “The Future of Creativity and Innovation is Gamification”, gamification entrepreneur and author Gabe Zichermann references how business leaders are using gamification within their companies to get ahead and he comments on the importance of “easy failure”. Employees should feel that “failure is okay” and that their perseverance is valued, and gamification should drive that so that they want to stay in the game even when the going gets tough. If you’re running the show, your job is to make things FUN and incentivize everyone to want to succeed in a way that helps your business reach the goals you’ve set out. If you want your team to work better together, you can organize them into groups that compete against each other so that it’s not an “every person for themselves” situation.

Create success metrics and milestones to motivate employees to collaborate, cheer each other on, and succeed as a team. Remember, this isn’t Big Brother, it may be a performance tool but don’t make your players feel like performing monkeys. Watch out for anyone who looks like they’re falling behind and use this extra visibility as a means to help them to progress rather than using it to “catch them out” or micro-manage them so they’re under even more pressure.

This is an opportunity for you to increase employee and employee/employer engagement in your organization, make results more visible so people feel acknowledged for their efforts, and encourage teammates to celebrate each other’s successes. This is even more important in the new remote work setting that every company has had to adapt to over the past 18 months, as many employees have lost the face-to-face interaction they’re used to and their way of working has drastically changed. This shift is set to continue as a recent Gartner survey showed that 74% of companies plan to permanently move at least 5% of employees to remote work after the pandemic, and more and more companies are going to have flexible remote working options as their default mode.

Getting Into The Gamification Game

So how do you motivate your team without that big office whiteboard announcing their rank? You make it digital, that’s how. This is something we’ve been working on lately at Buckets and we’re having a blast with what we’ve built so far (come check it out!). The gamification feature that we’ve added to our task management system allows members to measure their own success and see how they stack up against their peers with daily performance updates, scores, awards, and badges. As soon as you log in each day you’ll get points just for logging in (woooo, you’re out of bed! … or are you?!). Then as you get through your completed actions and tasks, the points just keep adding up, and the awards start rolling in.

Buckets is already very much based on motivating users to collaborate, complete their tasks, and hit deadlines, so gamification really is just the next level up (pun intended). And most importantly of all, we ensure that the competition is focused on celebrating success, not highlighting failure. So if you want to start utilizing gamification right now, we’ve already done the hard work — all you have to do is get your team on board!

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