VIDEO: Gamification Examples: Badges

This video is about how to use badges effectively in your business, specifically to motivate your employees. In the gamification community badges often get a bad wrap. They’re often used superficially along with points and leaderboards. What the truth about badges is they actually can be used to great effect. If we study the Boy Scouts or even the army. Both of these organizations use badges to get people to take incredible action. One of the companies that is using badges well online is Khan Academy.

It’s one of the most innovative companies to come along in the past 10 years in the education community. They have an entire page of badges students can learn from completing courses. There’s even third party videos where you can learn how to get difficult badges. Another example is codecadmey. This is where students come to learn to code different computer lessons. So once you complete your PHP course, you’ll get a badge that signifies you’re a master in the PHP community.

The thing to learn from Khan Academy and Codecadmey is that these organizations use badges to represent something meaningful. They aren’t giving out badges for employee of the month or most enthusiastic employee. They’re giving out badges that represent meaningful work that in some cases has taken months or even years to complete. Work that improves employees as well as the business and that’s where you can get value out of badges. Look for that space where employees need to complete actions that benefit your business that also benefits them.

Don’t just put your business first, you have to think about your users otherwise you’re going to give out badges for very very superficial things and they aren’t going to have a great effect.