If you make your program fun and exciting, you will be pleasantly surprised with the great results you achieve. Interest will skyrocket. People will be talking at the water cooler and they will stop you in the hall. Fun rules!
Gamification works well in business resilience.
If you have never heard of gamification here is Wikipedia’s definition:
The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service. Gamification is exciting because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun.
I will vouch for the definition. It works!
Here are some tips on ways to gamify your program. I am sure you will come up with a great many more fun ways to learn ideas:
Tip – Whatever type of game you use make it a fun learning experience. Keep the contest, puzzle, etc. on topic. Map it to a phase of resilience you want to emphasize.
Tip – Ready, Set, Go! – First employee to correctly answer a short list of business resilience / continuity related survey questions gets sports tickets, movie tickets, pizza lunch, a coffee mug, etc. You can get fancier and allow points to accumulate over multiple contests toward more rewarding prizes earned over time. People love climbing up the leader board. It can be more rewarding than the actual prize! Check out IOS and Android apps and see how some creatively use points and leader boards. Some make a fortune doing it. Your fortune will be in creating a highly resilient organization and the rewards that go with it.
Tip – Trying to solve a problem? Name a newsletter? Improve processes? What about a take-off on the X-Prize? Employees submit ideas to solve the problem. Sort of resilience crowd-sourcing. If the prize (incentive) is attractive enough you will receive a great deal of participation. In fact, it may go ‘viral’ in your company. Employees love these types of contests. If you publicize the winning entries, it will create a positive feedback loop for future contests.
Tip – Use your newsletter, website, email body, email signature and text messages to deliver and create awareness for your BC games and contests.
Tip – I often include a quick trivia contest or quiz with prizes as part of my tabletop and relocation exercises.
Tip – During national strategy meetings with leaders and BC liaisons incorporate themed games such as Business Continuity Jeopardy and Business Continuity Employee Departments Feud (Accounting versus HR…).
Let your imagination run wild. Have fun!