The key to any business is the people within it, and for high performing recruitment agencies - even more so. Your recruitment consultants are your most valuable assets, and it is paramount to retain them, enhance their skills, experience, and most importantly, their motivation and mindset. In the current climate, keeping your employees engaged and driven can be a challenge.
Sales is hard enough when a customer’s decision is based on a multitude of factors, with the common competitor being lethargy to do anything about their problems.
Recruitment is even harder! In the sale of a product or service, once a customer is convinced on selecting to spend with you, your job is pretty much done - (bar the final contractual to’s and fro’s).
In recruitment, the added challenge is that the candidate (the product your recruiters are selling) can change its mind as to where it wants to go! You have two customers to support and close - the client and the candidate.
Both have to make the same buying decision in order for your sale to come together. This means two sets of selling activities to execute and track and all the focus is on the people element.
What can you do to drive the correct repeatable behaviours of your recruitment team, to motivate and engage them in a time when much of their time may be spent remotely? The answer lies in gamification - a concept that is fully integrated into OneUp's own platform.
Getting your game face on can re-energise the team, introduce more engagement and fun, and kick start the new year with the drive the need.
‘89% report when a specific task is gamified, they feel competitive & eager to complete it’
(TalentLMS Gamification at Work survey)
Gamification is a concept which uses game theory, mechanics, and game designs to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve goals; be they their own, those of their supplier or those of their own organisation.
So why should you care? What can it bring to you and your recruitment business?
In a nutshell:
- Greater results.
- More focus on the right activities that drive placements.
- A self-motivated team that strives for greater efforts and achievements.
- Greater profit.
‘68% of recruiting professionals state the best way to improve recruiting performance over the next 5yrs is by investing in new technology.’
(Source: Linkedin’s Future of Recruiting Report)
So let's get engaged with the realities of gamification and why it works.
Firstly, we already live in a gamified world. One where we are motivated and driven to engage and take action based on rewards and competitive comparison. This drives action and influences behaviour, and it works because it aligns with the way the brain works.
Getting a reward - whether big or small, releases dopamine within the brain, giving an addictive "good feeling" which is the basis of motivation. Gamification is simply about communicating a reward to someone for a behaviour on a repeated basis to tell them they are on their way and are doing the right things. Habitually they will check in to see if they are doing well and repeat their actions to progress further.
As consumers we are all used to collecting reward points for the likes of Nectar cards and Starbucks, for simple behaviours and actions such as buying certain products or filling in surveys.
Even SatNavs have become gamified! If you’re a Waze’r I am sure you will have at some point heard the phrase ‘King Wazer’; a goal you achieve through the earning of points based on mileage driven, reports contributed to the Waze community of traffic reports and other such actions. Waze has gamified and disrupted the map industry. In the same arena, take a loot at Uber, where both driver and passenger are gamified by their mutual ratings of each other.
In the business world we are not immune; Salesforce’s Trailblazing community is a gamified learning platform, that for those in the Salesforce world becomes a badge of honour amongst peers. It successfully drives the behaviour to take more learning modules in order to gain more points and badges (such as from Explorer up to Ranger).
Social Media is by definition gamified; people strive for followers, likes, views and shares with the most successful volume achievers of these often finding a lucrative influencer role where they get paid for their shares and promotion for others. Facebook has gamification at its core, drawing users to come back repeatedly and to take actions, serving as a prime example of gamification driving billions of users to log onto their platform every day!
‘Employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%) & happier (88%) at work’
(TalentLMS Gamification at Work survey)
Tying gamification to your business goals is key. At the simplest level for your recruiters, this is placement of candidates into paying roles. However, contributing to this are a breadth of good behaviours and activities on a repeated basis such as calls made, meetings booked for candidates, CV’s sent, first interviews arranged, candidates added, job roles added, second interviews, etc.
Sales is a numbers game, but of productivity (the right amount of the right activity) not purely activity for the sake of activity. Gamification can drive these ‘right’ activities in the right mix and visibility reward the individual and team for behaviours that lead to results.
Gamification works for us all, as evidenced in the general consumer world. It particularly works well for those with a sales persona - those who thrive on an added level of competition and results-driven outcomes.
By re-enforcing positive behaviours with that dopamine hit, we incentivise the actions that drive the outcome, encouraging them to become habitual. This drives individuals past the avoidance of unloved chores such as admin, as these form part of the gamification process. (This is called using operant conditioning to meet business objectives). Managers define a set of smaller milestones with positive associated payoffs that combine to the greater goal for the individual and business.
Gamification also opens up sales data to drive growth, share best practices, and motivate those not at the top of the performance leader board.
The same human who you employ for your recruiter role is actively participating and having their behaviours motivated using gamification today through online gaming, reward cards, devices such as FitBits and more.
Why would you not use the same simple motivational methods to gain the desired business outcomes? Gamification creates a more engaged, fun and driven sales environment, which drives greater work satisfaction, retention, and success. It goes without saying that a recruiter that does more of the right things will be more successful, and this benefits both themselves and your organisation.
‘Sales were improved by 56.4% at Hewlett Packard when they used Gamification (Project Everest) to reward reseller teams with related prizes’
(Source : Hewlett Packard)
OneUp Sales - building high performance sales teams by increasing productivity, retaining talent, and empowering management across your organisation. Learn more about our platform and get in touch to OneUp your team for a stronger and more profitable year ahead.
