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Achievement badges are a lot like Pokémon, “Gotta catch ‘em all!” They do nothing, but they mean everything.

The Apple Watch activity app monthly challenges and limited-edition badges get me every single time.

I am constantly chasing the badges in efforts to maintain some type of self-invoked streak and proudly displaying my digital badge for my friends and family to see.

The concept of gamification is not unique, but it is quite effective. So how can you level up your employer brand with gamification? Let’s take a look.

What is Gamification?

Gamification is simply creating competition, or a sense of competition, in a non-typical gaming environment. For example, in the workplace, gamification can help employee engagement, experience and retention, in turn creating a more positive culture and a network of brand ambassadors to promote your employer brand.

Building Your Network of Brand Ambassadors

There’s no one better to tell your brand story than the people who work for you. Using employee-generated content shows real people telling real stories – it’s creative, authentic, and showcases diversity.

Allowing employees to choose whether they want to participate is key. Those who opt-in to be engaged are more than likely going to be your best ambassadors.

Build gameplay around value for the employee, but also value for your employer brand goal: positioning yourself as an employer of choice to attract top talent.

Value can take many different forms for employees. From building personal brand to demonstrating engagement; there has to be both immediate and long-term incentive. The immediate can be unlocking achievement badges, the long-term can be for performance review time.

The Real Winner

Having an enthusiastic and committed brand ambassador network will drive talent attraction and support recruitment marketing goals with minimal effort and costs.

Your employer brand and/or recruitment marketing team can maximize the engagement by focusing on increasing brand awareness and collecting content. Whether that content is in the form of videos, images, testimonials, employee stories or even referrals, you’ll have more people talking about your brand and a repository of employee-generated content for your future recruitment marketing efforts.

Not every game has to have a winner – just kidding – yes, it does. And with a strong, cost-effective, scalable employer brand strategy that includes gamification – you are the real winner.

Monica Medina

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Monica Medina is a full-stack marketer with over 15 years of experience. She has done everything from internal communications, digital marketing, and social media to her current role as an Employer Brand Lead at Capgemini. Her passion lies in content creation - whether ghostwriting for C-level, crafting internal communications or copywriting for digital, print or social media - she finds a story in everything.