Confluence and Jira are among the most powerful collaboration tools on the market. Teams can create notes and plans and share feedback and knowledge - all in a single location. However, these tools are most beneficial when employees actively use and collaborate on an ongoing basis. When teams are bogged down, contributing to Jira or reading through Confluence pages can feel like just another chore piled onto an already busy schedule.
Fortunately, there are ways to motivate your employees to use Jira and Confluence more often and more effectively: gamification.

What Is Gamification?

Gamification is the application of game-playing elements (like challenges, point scoring, competition, etc.) to encourage engagement in workplace activities. According to TalentLMS, 89% of employees say that gamification increases their productivity and happiness at work. When employees are physically and mentally involved in an activity, they are more likely to feel stimulated and motivated to continue. Gamification can also foster healthy competition and team spirit in an organization.
67% of US households love playing video games already. Gamification is rooted in motivation - when we complete a task or beat the competition in exchange for an accolade or a reward, we get a hit of the feel-good chemical dopamine. The more you do, the more dopamine you receive, making it easier to stay motivated. According to Scientific American, assigning value to activity increases motivation levels. The same study shows that individuals who develop proficiency for something are more likely to continue doing it. Gamification taps into these motivators to drive desired behavior.

Three Tips For Gamification

Gamification can be a useful tool for almost every business, but there are times when it's simply not the best way to achieve your goals. A few tips to consider:

• Don't Make It Mandatory: Forcing employees to compete and play defeats the purpose and can be demotivating instead of motivating. The administrator can choose participants, so only choose participants that genuinely want to play and will derive some value from it.

• Only Gamify When It Makes Sense: Don't gamify for the sake of gamification. Decide what you would like to achieve. Do you want your team to close more tickets? Create more content? Work together as a team? Only use gamification if it can bring you closer to achieving your goals.

• Quit While You're Ahead: Would you watch a football match if you already knew who was going to win at the start? Sometimes there are clear winners who take home all of the trophies time and time again. This can be demotivating and take the fun out of playing. Don't be scared to announce a winner and start a new game to keep things fresh. Change the rules to keep the playing field level if you have to.

The Benefits of Gamification

There are several benefits to using gamification to motivate employees, including:

Knowledge Retention

By adding gamification elements, everyday tasks become more enjoyable. It can be immensely satisfying moving to a new rank or unlocking a new achievement, which can help keep your employees interested and attentive even during the most routine tasks. This also keeps reminding employees of what they've learned, where they should focus their attention, and how to apply their knowledge.

Boost Employee Happiness and Satisfaction

Games are stimulating for a reason. Human beings like to feel that they are good at what they do and that their efforts are recognized and appreciated. Gamification "ranks" and high scores are a great way of acknowledging employees in an automated and fun way.

Encourage Adoption

Gamification boosts participation and usage. If employees are slow to leave feedback or resolve tickets, you can use gamification ranks to motivate them to tick items off the to-do list. This not only gets work done more efficiently but lowers the learning curve and increases the adoption rate of new processes.

Teamwork

Sometimes team members can spot behavior in their colleagues that might go unnoticed by leadership. When using gamification rankings, companies can get team members to award each other for sharing their expertise or creating pages. This not only builds a great team spirit but can serve as a powerful motivator for others to share their knowledge and skills.

Foster a Learning Culture

Games motivate us to keep exploring and chasing moving goalposts. By adding achievements and ranks that need to be unlocked through learning, a company can subtly create a culture of learning without making it feel like an unpleasant chore. Gamification can be as effective as any form of e-learning.

Healthy Competition

Most of us have a sense of innate competitiveness that drives us to achieve better results. Healthy competition gives everyone an equal opportunity to compete and win, encouraging participation and motivating employees to learn new skills.

Motivational Tools for Jira and Confluence

Jira and Confluence use gamification to make routine activities more fun and engaging. Virtually any task in Confluence and Jira can be gamified using Trophies for Confluence or Trophies for Jira, including writing app documentation, creating quotes, or even brainstorming together. Teams and team members can earn awards and points that can be linked to exciting prizes and accolades based on your goals.

How It Works

App developers Caelor created Trophies for Jira and Confluence to encourage employees to complete tasks and master skills on both platforms. (Companies that utilize both apps can manage them via a single dashboard).Recent achievements and activities, as well as accumulated points and awards, are displayed in a dashboard to keep users motivated, while an administrator can set the point units and award limits per day according to the business goals. They can also send and manage notifications and participation.Achievements are awarded or received ranks after a user meets specific, pre-defined conditions, e.g., if a user has created a set amount of issues, they can receive the Author badge. Users can view the public profiles, ranking positions, points, and activities of other players to foster healthy competition among employees.If the company is working towards a specific goal, e.g., closing a set number of tickets within two weeks, the administrator can create a custom event and award a prize to the highest scorers as a motivational tool. The game and points can be reset at any stage, and points can be viewed per week, month or year to encourage participation.

Conclusion

When work becomes fun, even the most boring everyday tasks become easier to complete. Gamification can encourage employees to complete the tasks they keep putting off in Confluence and Jira, learn on the job, and master new skills. Trophies for Jira and Trophies for Confluence are one of the easiest ways to keep your employees motivated and happy at work. Why not set a challenge and see if it can transform your team?