Know your organization before investing in gamification, study finds

From onboarding to training, gamification can be a sustainable and fun way in the workplace for employees to learn and earn micro rewards, badges, or even recognition. However, when it is not implemented right, that is when it can become un-fun and unsustainable. 

At least that is what Jerry Chen, a recently graduated master’s student from Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business in Montreal found in his latest research — a master’s thesis focusing on how gamification can influence employee behaviour. 

The research focuses on the nuances of how the gamification process affects employees and the unintended consequences the process can have — with some leaving feeling disengaged, and others building pressure rather than motivation. 

“What I found in literature is more talking about how communication designs or how communication should work. But what I’m really focusing on is on the organization part,” he says. 

His Chen’s research includes interviews with 16 participants — 60 per cent managerial and 40 per cent front-line employees — from China, Taiwan, and Canada working in various different industries including  semiconductors, software development, and asset management engineering. All participants have experienced gamification within at organizations of 1,000 or more employees. 

Not every workplace is ready for gamification 

Speaking to Canadian HR Reporter, Chen says that organizations should be looking at their organizational context before investing. 

“When you’re designing gamification in your company, you have to first see —’ ‘Is our employees acceptable for this approach or not?’” he says. “And this is the first step. You want to see — ‘Is our environment good for it?’” 

The research shows how heavy workload, access to opportunities, and supportive workplace relations all play into the process of how employees experience the gamification. 

For example, participants in the semiconductor industry said the heavy workload meant gamification could add the positive effect of “getting to relax” — but it also created extra demands, especially when performance scores and expectations were involved. 

“When you’re introducing a gamification process into your existing work routine to the employees... you are adding more stuff to an already existing workload,” he says. “So, how do you convince them to do it? Or also, how do you convince them ... ‘This is actually a benefit for you’?”  

The continuous feedback loop  

When it came to the factor of a supportive workplace culture, the research highlights that organizations that incorporated employee collaboration and autonomy into the gamification gave employees a sense of choice in participating — rather than feeling forced into it.  

Chen says continuous feedback is very important, especially as employees have different needs and preferences. 

“What’s your uncomfortable things or comfortable things with this new gamification process and what do you want to improve? That way, you can continue to build up your process to make it better during the whole gamification,” he says. 

Chen points out that one interview participant has participated in a gamification process for 10 years in the workplace and said having the chance to help come up with a different process every year helped make the game fresh and interesting. 

“They also will get feedback every time when the gamification is finished and say — what kind of things [they] want to improve and what kind of things [they] don’t like about it, and we’ll just try to adjust for that,” he says. 

Recognition over metrics 

Recognition plays an important role in boosting employee engagement. A 2025 study published in PLOS ONE, examining data from 25,285 employees in South Korea, found that recognition was the strongest driver of employee engagement — outperforming fairness, involvement, and transformational leadership. The recognition also helped employees feel valued and acknowledged.  

With gamification, it also plays a key identifying factor, Chen says. Participants positively viewed the gamification process when it was used to recognize employees’ contributions — especially over performance metrics. 

Chen says gamification with only performance metrics can bring down the motivation factor — and that the system should instead focus on making sure all employees have a chance to get something out of it. 

He points out that one of the managers' participants found that providing badges — which were sometimes seen as recognition — helped employees learn more and perform better. 

“I really do see the pattern that our employees are using this recognition system to... help each other or motivate each other,” he says. 

The problem with overselling the prize 

Rewards such as financial ones can also be an important factor in the gamification process, Chen says. 

 Based on participant interviews, motivation is also partly driven by material rewards. However,  those rewards can also have unintended consequences, he says. 

“We noticed during our interviews that you have people that actually want to rig the system because when they say they know how the system works, they know how to make the most points, they’ll try to say, ‘I don’t want to actually learn anything through the process,’” Chen says. 

“You don’t want to oversell it.” 

Manager communication is what makes gamification stick 

Overall the most important aspect of gamification comes down to communication — specifically how well managers explain the reasoning behind the initiative, what employees stand to gain, and how it ties into the organization broader goals. 

“It really depends on how the managers communicate this system to their employees,” Chen says.