Engaging Employees through Gamification Date:   Monday , February 13, 2017 Headquartered in California, Symphony SUMMIT is a leading provider of public cloud based IT operations management solutions to businesses. Their unique product \'SUMMIT\' is an advanced ITIL 2011 certified solution that unifies key applications across Service Management, Asset Management, Availability Management and Project Management in one single platform. A culture of winning enterprise performance requires that they have a high ability for change management. This is easier said than done, and in many organizations employees and managers find it hard to embrace change. Constant changes in the workforce, technologies, business strategies and processes, however necessary, give rise to significant challenges. It requires a continuous process of communication and performance feedback, and this makes gamification ideally suited to organizational change management. Handling Change through Gamification As a process, change management is structured and progresses in multiple phases to a targeted future state. In making changes, it is vital to motivate the workforce. Gamification does the job with motivated engagement, especially when people feel uncomfortable moving out of comfort zones. Deploying game mechanics to influence performance and develop accountability aims to change behavior by satisfying the individual\'s psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness. It uses intrinsic motivation for stronger engagement and better development of work habits. How Gamification Works to Drive Change Centered on adoption of habits and behavior, gamification motivates and influences employees to execute new activities repeatedly. In other words it ensures that in its repetitive cycle, the newness of behavior and performance is quickly made a routine habit. With automation, it helps move average performers closer to being top performers. This can have a very positive impact on the morale of the individual and organization performance. It provides different avenues for employees\' talents and keeps their interest and engagement high. All of this creates a voluntary adoption of change. Seamless Links to Enterprise Systems for a Unified Approach The use of game mechanics drives performance and creates accountability. It caters to an individual\'s basic needs of acknowledging competence, autonomy and relatedness. It maps company values and goals with what employees aim to achieve, with clear benchmarks and criteria. Such engaging performance management supports recognition systems and can be effectively used to weave employee engagement to their work environment. With its open communication mechanisms and real time feedback about achievement, gamification becomes an ideal tool for healthy and transparent workforce competitiveness. Employees appreciate their work environment, respect organization processes and do not bring personal biases in the work culture. Deploying the right and a unified platform is critical to effectively by: Keep track of project status, Reinforce desired behavior in the workforce, Drive the right work culture, Improve productivity and customer satisfaction. Built-in operational performance metrics in a gamification system drive the right behavior on a 24/7 basis. Collaboration is a natural corollary of smart gamification. It enables teams to improve key skills in change and create innumerable change strategies to meet the changing demands of business and markets.