During our “KM Conversation” with knowledge management evangelist and expert Stan Garfield, “Gamification Accelerates KM Adoption,” he focused on how you can use gamification techniques to crack the challenging problem of building user engagement and ensuring that your KM platform is vibrant and widely leveraged within your organization.

Knowledge Managers find gamification can be very useful as part of a strategy to encourage participation in knowledge initiatives. Stan Garfield offers this definition of gamification:

“Applying the typical elements of game-playing, such as point scoring, competition with others and rules of play to other areas, in order to encourage engagement with a process or tool. In the case of KM, we are trying to encourage people to share knowledge or ask for help, or participate in knowledge exchange in other meaningful ways.”

Elements of gamification

Stan describes a wide array of proven methods for increasing KM engagement and employee commitment, including:

• Badging—distinctive emblems that can be added to a profile to denote special status
• Goals—setting performance goals as part of normal performance planning; includes accountability
• Incentives—encourage compliance with goals by offering things people can benefit from; either tangible or intangible
• Recognition—praising, publication, promotion, public acknowledgement
• Rewards—can be financial or something else that shows “we appreciate your contribution.”

You can hear more from Stan Garfield on this and related issues when you link to our KM Conversation video, “Gamification Accelerates KM Adoption.”