This Hot Topic will shed light on how you can best uncover true talent within yourself and your company. We hope it will encourage you to re-consider what your employees truly have to offer, from a perspective you may not have previously considered.
Hidden Talents and Where to Find Them
Research suggests that employees expect to change job within five years. What would happen if one of your best employees stepped out today? What would be the best way to find talents and future leaders? Or maybe your most talented employee is under your nose and you don’t even know?
Although research constantly seeks to identify the best way to assess the hidden potential of employees, it often neglects a crucial component: innate and natural talent. A growing body of research has highlighted the revelatory power of gamification – the application of key elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring and competition) to help uncover an employee’s hidden potential.
In acknowledgement of the increasing interest in the use of gamification within business, recent research has suggested that despite their “bad” reputation, videogames could be a useful strategy in uncovering hidden talent. To elaborate, people who are good at computer games have been shown to demonstrate attributes such as determination, strategic thinking, problem solving abilities and resource management. However, the characteristics which are revealed in the game tend to be undermined and relegated to the world of gaming. Consequently, gamers might not even be aware that they possess those hidden skills, which are highly desirable in the workplace and can be applied outside of the virtual world.
Leadership Lesson: Why Play the Game?
As well as talent identification and development, organisations have been able to successfully exploit gamification processes as a means to:
Assess key employee competencies – This may include the development of activities which enable more accurate identification of desirable employee attributes such as creativity and critical thinking.
Enhance engagement – Gamification allows for greater flexibility within work-related practices. Consequently, employees can engage in more meaningful work which provides a greater sense of autonomy and fulfilment.
Foster positive emotion – We all know the main objective of a game is to provide a sense of enjoyment, therefore you’re perhaps unsurprised to hear that gamification helps employees unleash their imagination and creativity which, in turn, fosters creativity which can lead to better results.
Initiate flow states – Gamification can allow greater immersion in activities which actively challenge employees. A by-product of this immersion is the presence of the most elusive psychological state “flow”. Flow is regarded as the optimal performance state, which in turn could help workplace productivity reach an all time high.
Still not convinced? Look at some of the further benefits below:
Action Point
Based on the information presented in this month’s Hot Topic, how prepared is your organisation to embrace gamification? Consider three action points you could take to integrate elements of gamification into your team’s working practices.