How to use gamification to engage employees - #swarm

Hmm, this seems a bit off to be posted as a discussion. Maybe if it were a document and people could contribute their own ideas with simple edits we could get a crowd-sourced set of resources in one place. Feels kind of like an advertisement for Bunchball this way.

Best practices, eh? Always seems like such a loaded phrase ;-)

All I can say is I thought it was important to emphasize that this was an experiment. Our objective is to encourage positive and productive behaviors, and if we find that what we have set up with gamification is producing unintended negative results, we will change it. Furthermore, we'll be watching what happens and making changes based on what we see working well. And beyond that, over time we will change the levels we have now completely, to keep things fresh and interesting.

In other words, come join in the game and have fun, but be ready for change because we are learning as we go!

Hi everyone,

I'm definitely not ready to share any best practices but have been neck-deep prepping to launch gamification. I feel I am in the dark and keep stumbling on one thing or another - mainly technical items. I feel bad tapping Selin Korustan , Jennifer Kelley, Curtis Gross, Megan Truett and our consultants for constant advice but it's the only way I know how. That being said, here are some things that come to mind when answering Leigh's question - What are some best practices you've discovered when preparing to launch gamification in your community?

• Ask for Champions to test or to help develop the missions - I just asked who in our Champions group would be willing to test out our missions in UAT. We have about 6 who are going to test and I will also get their feedback for future missions and badges.
• Speak to other customers who've implemented gamification to get their feedback.
• Take the Free Gamification Course on Coursera thanks to Ted Hopton. Highly recommended
• Plan the LT strategy - I like the advice to have a phased roadmap - have a secret stash of badges to roll out, as well as higing the higher level status points until a later date. We are not going to implement the Store initially but will at a later date.
• A general "best practice" - Be very proactive on learning about strategy, hearing from other customers and being 100% sure of what can be technically done or customized.

Hi Leigh, are there docs attached (or displayed)? If so, I can't see them-- maybe my browser is not reading them? (I'm using Firefox 21.0)

We are just starting to explore gamification and using it on our internal Jive.  To start, we set up a Jive Champion campaign to see what kind of interest we would get. Every month we announce a Jive Champion - someone that is helping their peers in the support community or having huge success in their group. We compliment them on the actions that we want to achieve in our community, such as answering questions, replying on posts, being one of the top groups and having high points. We have done 3 Champions so far and everyone seems to enjoy it and they like complimenting their peers on their success.

Right now we are just giving high fives and pats on the back, but I see this growing as we learn from it