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“Prevention is better than cure”: Engaging

employees
challenges in engaging employees through
gamification
through gamification
Manish Gupta
School of Management, Mahindra University, Hyderabad, India
Received 21 March 2021
Abhishek Behl Revised 27 July 2021
OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India, and Accepted 13 August 2021

YLN Kumar
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies University – Hyderabad Campus,
Secunderabad, India

Abstract
Purpose – Gamification, the use of game elements and techniques in the non-game contexts, is gaining
popularity among human resources (HR) in an online mode. This paper intertwines the flow and engagement
theories to know the challenges faced by companies in India in implementing gamification in their various HR
practices to engage their employees.
Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews of only the information-rich cases including
game designers and HR practitioners were conducted using snowball sampling technique. The interviews were
transcribed and were analysed using thematic analysis.
Findings – Three reviewed themes emerged from the data labelled as organization-, employee- and job-specific
factors. Separate thematic maps drawn for each of the reviewed themes give particulars pertaining to the issues
highlighted by the game designers and the HR practitioners in gamification.
Practical implications – The results of the study are expected to help the organizations make an informed
decision about whether they should go ahead with risking their resources as they expect improved engagement
levels at work.
Originality/value – The findings contribute to the online engagement literature by exploring its antecedents
in the context of gamification of HR practices for higher engagement at work.
Keywords Online engagement, Thematic analysis, Gamification, HR practices
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
A 2019 report by Fortune Business Insights suggests that the global gamification market is
expected to be of US$37 billion by 2027 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of
24.8% (FBI, 2019). Another report by MarketsandMarkets predicts that the gamification
market will touch US$30.7 billion by 2025 (MarketsandMarkets, 2020). Gamification, the use
of game elements and techniques in non-game contexts, is increasingly attracting attention of
human resource management (HRM) scholars primarily due to its ability to engage HR online
and ultimately benefit the organizations (Murawski, 2020; Rana and Sharma, 2019; K€ upper
et al., 2021). Modern digital technology plays a key role from designing of these games to their
application at work (Silic et al., 2020). Here, engagement refers to investment of cognitive,
physical, and emotional energies simultaneously into their work (Schaufeli et al., 2006). Online
engagement is a specific type of engagement wherein these energies are used on an online
platform and which is why engagement through gamification in an online context is
technology-driven (Tsay, 2020).
In the field of HRM, for example, KPMG does it for recruitment, Walmart uses it for
onboarding and training, and Noble Systems applies it for creating a healthy competition
International Journal of Manpower
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0143-7720
Manish Gupta acknowledges the support extended by IBS Hyderabad in the initial phase of this study. DOI 10.1108/IJM-03-2021-0172
IJM (Nicol, 2020). Digital HRM appears to grow significantly from enterprise resource planning
to gamification (Bag et al., 2020, 2021; Telukdarie et al., 2018). While there has been a
considerable amount of research on the impact of gamification on positive organizational
outcomes, challenges pertaining to engagement through gamification are yet to be
scientifically explored (Lewis, 2019; Ferreira et al., 2017). According to some of the studies,
gamification may also go against the expected especially in HRM because human behaviours
are often unpredictable (Lewis, 2019; Tulsiani, 2020; Hammedi et al., 2021).
Gamification in HRM specifically comprises game elements and behaviour-motivating
techniques such as badges and leaderboards. These components are integrated to the
operational activities that give a game-like experience to the employees (Cardador et al., 2017).
An example could be integrating gamification into warehouse management system (WMS) to
enhance order picker engagement as mentioned by Passalacqua et al. (2020). However, scholars
warn that gamification does work but only under certain circumstances in certain conditions
and thus, context has to be given utmost importance (Webb, 2013). Thus, the scholars and
practitioners have been constantly exploring the context-specific factors that may help
employees engage in their work happily and in turn become more productive at work. Such
factors could be industry-related, or job-related, or even company-related. The aims that the
companies often eye to achieve using gamification involve customer service improvement,
enhancing brand loyalty and engaging employees to learn continuously (Silic et al., 2020).
Gamification in this digital age, is increasing its space and pace in the field of HRM. While
gamification had also been used in a non-digital platform, it is COVID-19 which increased the rate
of its growth digitally in an unprecedented manner. Several organizations now prefer using
gamification to engage their employees in their onboarding, learning and development,
competency mapping, and performance management activities (Kurter, 2018). Most of the studies
show that gamification helps organizations perform their HR duties better. However, there is a
growing body of research that covers the other side of the story, the possible issues with
gamification such as its temporal nature and fit with individuals (Andrade et al., 2016; Silic et al.,
2020). Thus, the research question is “Which are the factors that posit challenges to the HR
professional in engaging their employees online using gamification?” This paper explores the
factors that challenge the HR practitioners to engage their employees successfully. While some of
the factors such as enjoyment, recognition, motivation and usefulness of the game to the
employee have been brought forth by the prior studies using the flow theory, exploration from the
challenge side needs to be done. Given the huge number of resources used by the organizations in
gamifying the HR activities, it is important that the organizations take an informed decision by
knowing what could be the challenges and the plausible solutions to face them.

Theoretical background
The primary focus of this study is to bring forth the challenges faced by the practitioners in
engaging their employees in the gamified activities online. For the purpose of this study,
gamification refers to the application of game design mechanics at work within the HRM
systems online (Shuck, 2011). It necessitates integrating the game-like elements into the one
or more key stages of a typical HR process such as recruitment, on boarding, training, and
development to name a few. Thus, games are often designed to keep the employees fully
engaged in these activities with the help of badges, points, levels and leader boards to name a
few (Cardador et al., 2017). While clan-based games may also be used for promoting team
spirit, rank-based games may be used to promote healthy competition among colleagues
(Ahrens and Dobrzykowski, 2011; Liu et al., 2020). The argument for gamification working for
employees is because it not only stimulates enjoyment but also makes the employee more
productive (Burguillo, 2010). When made part of an HR system, a supervisor, for instance, can
award digital badges or stars for achieving a learning target (Silic, 2020).
The flow theory Engaging
To explain the process through which gamification of HR practices motivates employees to employees
invest their physical, emotional and cognitive energies into the game, scholars have often
used flow theory. According to this theory, individuals attain a state of flow wherein they
through
feel fully immersed in a particular activity. What motivates the individuals to attain flow is gamification
contextual though. For example, as Silic et al. (2020) mentioned “Musicians can reach flow
while playing music, and athletes might experience it while performing at the limits of their
physical capacity” (p. 262). In the same way, several factors may prompt employees to
experience the state of flow (Shuck, 2011). Therefore, we hypothesized that the introduction
of gamification in the HRM system may impact job satisfaction and engagement through
motivation, usefulness, recognition and enjoyment (Huang and Hsieh, 2011). Based on this
theory, they argued that the precondition for the flow to occur is that both challenges and
skills must exceed the level of the player’s day-to-day difficulty experiences. In addition,
continuous challenge coupled with more difficult tasks makes level of the focal individual’s
skills consistent. If the game is played online, certain online flow elements such as
challenge, control and interactivity may help determine the gamers’ behavior (Novak
et al., 2000).
To date, scholars have determined several antecedents and consequence of individuals
experiencing flow through gamification. For example, antecedents include challenge,
interactivity, aesthetics, enjoyment, recognition and usefulness (Huang and Hsieh, 2011; Suh
et al., 2017), whereas consequences include creativity, job engagement, productivity, repeat-
behaviour, job satisfaction and learning (Kalinauskas, 2014; Kumar and Raghavendran,
2015). Given the importance of context-specific research, scholars have researched
gamification in diverse fields. For example, Hanus and Fox (2015) did it in the educational
sector in a Midwestern university, Neeli (2012) did it in Business Process Outsourcing
industry, Gryaznova (2019) did it for Finnish employees, and Silic et al. (2020) did it in a US-
based financial services company.

Role of gamification in engaging employees

The literature linking gamification to employee engagement is still emerging and is mostly
conceptual. As mentioned by Sarangi and Shah (2015), the reason for gamification gaining
popularity is that while work is not always fun, games are fun. Thus, integrating games with
work may make work fun as originally cited in Mollick and Rothbard (2013). As pointed out
by the authors, the literature suggests some employee engagement mechanics including (1)
points that reflect status which when earned, the behaviours of employees changed
positively, (2) challenges and levels that give a sense of accomplishment in the form of
achieving milestones or levels to bolster employees’ self-esteem and performance, (3) trophies,
achievements and badges that are visible signs of recognition and instils pride and provides
purpose, (4) virtual goods with which employees can customize to feel empowered, (5) leader-
boards that showcase comparative position of the employees and promote healthy
competition and inter or intra team comparisons.
Whereas the aforementioned benefits and research on the positive outcomes of engaging
employees in the gamified HRM systems logically explains the prominence of gamification in
an HR process, the issues relating to pre-, during- and post-gamification should not be
ignored. There are few studies and articles in the gamification literature that list a number of
such challenges. For example, Xu et al. (2013) mentioned that for designers, the challenge for
“game designers is to create a flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008) and vary the difficulty
within the flow channel to neither under nor over challenge the player” (p. 530). Similarly,
Souza et al. (2020) stated that some of the challenges in the tourism industry are “the lack of
investment, resistance to new technologies, low eco-consciousness of tourists and distraction
from issues that matter” (p. 255). In line with that Maltseva (2019), raised certain concerns
IJM such as assessing the effect of gamification and suitability for some audiences but not for
others.
Indeed, there is a considerable amount research focusing on the drivers of users’
motivational factors behind the usage of gamified processes. But as prior studies argue that
covering users’ side alone may not be sufficient as “the way that games are introduced and
implemented into the workplace appears critical to their acceptance and success” (p. 333).
Thus, insights into the challenges faced by the HR practitioners pertaining to engaging
employees to work on the gamified HRM systems has not been explored. As explained in the
subsequent section, the authors of this paper address this gap in a qualitative study.

Methodology
Informant details and data gathering procedure
A systematic process was followed for collecting data. First, the authors fixed a slot for the
interview with an informant. Second, the authors sent an online meet link to the informant.
Third, the informant was interviewed. Fourth, the response so collected was transcribed and
analysed. Fifth, the informant was re-approached for clarification, if required. Sixth, the
aforementioned steps were followed for the next informant, in case information did not get
saturated. Though the informants were approached using references from the previous
informant, certain screening questions were asked in the beginning of each interview to make
sure that they know both gamification and its application in HRM. A sample screening
question is “What would you like to say about HR practices in your company?” The core
question, however, was “What challenges companies often face before, and/or during, and/or
after implementing gamification for engaging employees?” It was asked to ensure that the
responses are anchored to the objective of the study. These core questions were followed by
closing questions to obtain any other information and contact details of the next potential
informant (refer Table 1 for the questionnaire). The average duration for an interview
was 40 min.
For this study, a total of 28 informants were selected from different parts of the world in
which 6 were female, post which, information got saturated. The informants’ age ranged from
29 to 55 years (M 5 39.15 years, SD 5 7.74), their average total work experience was
13.77 years (SD 5 8.07) and average work experience with their current company was
6.06 years (SD 5 6.14). The data collection and data analysis were done iteratively to
ascertain information saturation point. Because of its relevance to the topic under
investigation, the authors of this paper chose the first informant who was a participant in
the GamiCon 2021, a US-based international gamification conference. At the end of the first
respondent’s response, a reference for the plausible next informant was asked by applying
the snowball sampling method.
The authors had the necessary qualification for conducting semi-structured depth
interviews. All the informants were approached using a virtual meeting platform in a slot
convenient to them and their responses were tape-recorded or/and noted down with their
prior consent. The informants were briefed about the research topic and were also assured on
confidentiality and anonymity of their responses. They were assured of the usage of the data
that it is solely for the purpose of research. They were consultants, designers, owner, senior
associate (HR), director, founder and heads. Table 2 comprehends the demographic details.

Data analysis
To analyse the transcribed data, thematic maps as suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006)
were developed. This technique has also been appreciated and used by prior studies arguing
that it “distinguishes between inductive data coding and analysis, where the method seeks to
Inclusion Criteria
Engaging
 Must be an employee working in India employees
 Must be at a decision-making position through
 Must be aware about gamification in HRM
gamification
Informant details
 Respondent number
 Age (in years completed)
 Gender
 Designation
 Current company
 Total work experience (in months completed)
 Work experience in the current company (in months completed)

Ice-breaking question
 What would you like to say about HR practices in your company?
 How are employees engaged in your company?
 Can you name a few pioneer organizations in India which are known for gamifying their HR practices?
Core questions (probed when required): All are relating to gamification in HRM for engaging employees
 In what way, you think, gamification can help a company in managing human resources in your industry?
 What’s the status of gamification implementation in your organization?
 What challenges companies often face before, and/or during, and/or after implementing gamification for
engaging employees?
 Compared to western countries, how gamification in India may differ in practice?
 Do these challenges differ according to the life-cycle stage a company is in?

Closing questions
 What advice would you like to give to the companies regarding gamifying as part of the HR practices?
 Anything else or any point you would like to add to this interview? Table 1.
 Would you like to know the results of this study? Broad scheme of the
 Can you suggest someone’s name who can be a potential informant for this interview? semi-structured
 Categories of challenging factors interviews

build constructs implied by the data to be constructed into a network of patterns, versus
deductive/theory-driven data coding and analysis, which uses data deriving from
participants to populate pre-specified theoretical constructs with contextually relevant
content” (Anderson and Thoma, 2021, p. 307). Thematic analysis is also used to uncover
regularities and patterns among categories as argued by Shank (2006).
In thematic maps, reviewed themes were developed by clubbing the similar potential
themes together, and each potential theme was developed by clubbing the codes together.
The codes were derived from significant phrases from the informants’ interview transcripts.
These significant statements were derived after reading and re-reading the transcripts and
the objective of this study. The reason was to draw a comprehensive picture of the
informants’ collective responses irrespective of the frequency of a statement appearing in the
transcript or whether mentioned by the other informants or not.
To ensure credibility and dependability, the recommendations given by Whittemore et al.
(2001) were followed. In that, credibility of the findings was ensured by clearly documenting
the stages of analysis as well as by making sure that there is an agreement reached between
the authors about the data interpretation which was analysed independently by them a priori.
To ensure dependability, member-check was done. For this, few of the informants who gave
their contact information were requested to give their feedback on the findings. To ensure
transferability of the findings, both designers’ and HR practitioners’ responses were taken
from different countries and continents.
IJM Total work Work Ex in current
# Age Gender Designation Country Ex (in yrs) company (in yrs)

1 29 Male Gamification Consultant India 6.00 1.92

2 31 Male Consultant Germany 3.50 1.25
3 47 Male Owner USA 20.67 6.25
4 43 Male Head of digital Creation Germany 9.17 3.25
5 30 Male Senior Associate (HR) India 4.00 1.92
6 44 Male Director UK 18.00 2.00
7 39 Female Game Designer Sweden 22.92 8.67
8 34 Female Founder and President USA 10.00 6.42
9 36 Male Commercial Director and Spain 8.00 3.42
Partner
10 52 Male Founder and CEO India 26.67 17.42
11 46 Male Independent Consultant India 22.00 2.00
12 46 Male Head – Learning and India 25.00 4.00
Development
13 44 Male Designer The Netherlands 18.00 17.00
14 35 Male Designer and Teacher Spain 7.00 5.00
15 33 Female Founder and CEO Australia 6.00 3.00
16 54 Male Founder and CEO Sweden 31.00 5.00
17 34 Male Founder and CEO USA 8.00 7.00
18 38 Male Human Resources Shared Egypt 16.00 11.00
Services Manager
19 40 Female Founder and Co-CEO Germany 14.00 2.00
20 35 Male Gamification Designer Turkey 12.00 5.00
21 58 Male Gamestorming Consultant USA 27.00 27.00
22 34 Female Octalysis Consultant Switzerland 12.00 5.00
23 29 Male Co-owner United Kingdom 2.00 1.00
24 42 Male Project Supervisor United Kingdom 16.00 12.00
25 36 Male Director Singapore 8.00 1.00
Table 2. 26 32 Male Director Singapore 9.00 2.00
Demographic details 27 36 Female Founder India 10.00 2.00
of the informants 28 55 Male Ex CHRO India 30.00 15.00

Results
Detailed interaction with practitioners provided rich data. The analysis of this data using
thematic analysis technique provided the authors of this paper with a lot of interesting
insights.

Organization-specific factors
Diversity. One of the informants said “Europe and India are ahead than USA The acceptance
level is higher in different parts of the world” (Respondent no. 3; Aged 47 years; Male).
Another informant said “For example, a <company anonymized> in Mumbai caters to
global customers. Businesses today need to have healthy mix of global and local
responsiveness in their approach to customers. Sitting in India or working from home, one
may cater to global customers. Local Customers may want Global Experiences. So,
Gamification in HR practices need to adapt the customer centric/business centric approach
to make the simulation as near to real life scenarios” (Respondent no. 11; Aged 46 years;
Male). These quotes represent geography. Interestingly though, there was another quote “I
see that the relevance of Gamification in HR Practices is equally important be it western
countries or India. Practices I think will vary depending on the type of Industry like
Manufacturing, Banking, Insurance, Aviation, Cab Services, Ecommerce, IT, Hospitality,
Tourism, etc.” (Respondent no. 11; Aged 46 years; Male). Another informant added “For Engaging
utility companies like power companies they are interest mostly because it is long and employees
boring it works. Compliance training has gamification demand vs on boarding. Some
company had 80 h of on boarding which was boring and they kept losing people”
through
(Respondent no. 3; Aged 47 years; Male). Respondents 21 and 28 also spoke on the similar gamification
lines. These quotes reflected the industry code”. One of the informants replied to the core
question about challenge by saying “Especially big companies at some point or the other
using gamification. A small adjustment is needed. They have all the tools to trick your
employees” (Respondent no. 2; Aged 31 years; Male). The informant seemed to be frustrated
from the bureaucracy involved in big companies. Indeed, the geography, industry and
company code together represent the diversity potential theme.
Leadership. There were other unique quotes that could be coded separately such as “A
year ago, the project was funded but they did not know what they wanted in terms of
learning. So, that was the problem in beginning. In the end, the implementation did not
happen and it was a big organization. They took it forever to launch and they are finally
launching. It takes time from idea to launch” (Respondent no. 3; Aged 47 years; Male). Akin to
this quote was “I have discovered that it is important to identify the ‘why’ before the ‘how’ of
gamification and it requires deep thought process and time” (Respondent no. 26; Aged
32 years; Male). These quotes represent the patient code. Another example is “The
organization wants to know this and am I doing something to improve it. Companies are
trying to push people to build Resilience and offshoot of that is building a culture of certain
values and resilience is in the core of it” (Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male). The next
challenged was observed in the quote of Respondent 3: “First the company says this is what
we want but later they say we would find something else. So, leadership drives it. We are here
to do a job and not fun but work is not opposite of play” (Respondent no. 3; Aged 47 years;
Male). It was coded as cooperative. On asking of the advice to the companies, one informant
said “have a clarity and vision on how HR would enable the workforce [. . .] clear strategy on
whether the company will have a lean workforce right from the beginning” (Respondent no.
12; Aged 46 years; Male). It clearly reflected the visionary aspect and was coded as such. The
three codes namely patient, cooperative and visionary represented a common potential
theme, leadership.
Process. The next potential theme was process which was derived from two codes. One
of the codes was after-sales reflected in “Post execution, game mechanics get old and not a
lot of people get it. Gamified system might do good for three months and then needs
refreshing it. After sales is not there” (Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male) and the other
was HR working in silos reflected in “The same challenges of implementing media. HR
folks if they work in silos, they might not pin point actual problem” (Respondent no. 1;
Aged 29 years; Male). The reason why diversity, leadership and process were labelled as
organization-specific factors because these are in the control of the organization (refer
Figure 1).

Employee-specific factors
This reviewed theme had two potential themes under it.
Pre-commencement. The first was pre-commencement which consisted of the generation,
competence, and nature codes. The generation code was reflected in “Younger professional
workforce really seen getting more acceptance. Gamer generation you know” (Respondent no.
3; Aged 47 years; Male). The competence code was reflected in “There would be some who
may not get motivated. If some mechanics do not work” (Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years;
Male). Similarly, the nature code was reflected in “What the motivators are? What is the
person really feeling and motivates him/her” (Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male).
IJM Post-commencement. There was a post-commencement potential theme as well which was
derived from three potential themes. The first one was sophophile effect reflected in “There is
possibility that the learner might like to know more than content. What next? This makes a
world of a difference” (Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male). The second one was dilettante
infatuation reflected in the responses of multiple informants “It has a lot of novelty in the
beginning and later on it wears off. The reason we engage with the games is challenges keep
coming. We think about level-ups etc. and learning over time” (Respondent no. 3; Aged
47 years; Male). The third code was stress reflected in “The bad feeling due to stress is bad.
Curiosity is required in gamification” (Respondent no. 2; Aged 31 years; Male). When asked
for clarification, the inference was that sometimes, the employees are not able to advance in a
game and thus, they feel stressed. Refer Figure 2 for Reviewed Theme 2.

Job-specific factors
The job-specific factors reviewed theme comprised the inputs and outcomes potential themes.
Inputs. The “inputs” theme was labelled by clubbing three codes. The first of which was
scope reflected in “We often deny when the client does not have clear learning outcomes. We
do not do it just for fun. So, it will either not work or will take very long” (Respondent no. 3;
Aged 47 years; Male). The second of which was congruence reflected in “we have been able to
recognize and appreciate external best practices in terms of digital technology enhancement
to create and customize the right products and services for our customers” (Respondent no.
12; Aged 46 years; Male) and “We are focused on customized solutions. The people and people
problems differ from company to company” (Respondent no. 4; Aged 43 years; Male). The
third of which was game elements reflected in “It is client specific. Some elements can be used

Organization-specific factors

Diversity Leadership Process

Figure 1.
Thematic map for Geography Industry Company Patient Cooperative Visionary After-sales
HR working in
reviewed theme 1 silos

(organization-specific
factors)
Note(s): Oval represents reviewed themes, rectangle represents potential themes, and rounded rectangle represents codes

Employee-specific factors

Pre-commencement Post-commencement

Figure 2.
Thematic map for
reviewed theme 2 Generation Competence Nature Sophophile effect Dilettante infatuation Stress
(employee-specific
factors)
Note(s): Oval represents reviewed themes, rectangle represents potential themes, and rounded rectangle represents codes
as is but it’s very individual. Sales people who need to be achievers. Showing them how they Engaging
are making progress is for some. But for others where creativity is required, gamification employees
might not work. You have to go to all the phases like onboarding, scuffling phase, end game
phase be able to do multiple things with expertise” (Respondent no. 2; Aged 31 years; Male).
through
Outcomes. The “outcomes” potential theme was derived from two codes. The gamification
“measurement” code was reflected in “Mental and physical health are difficult to measure”
(Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male). The effectiveness/feedback code was derived from
“While effectiveness measure, you feel like it does not work especially after investing a lot”
(Respondent no. 1; Aged 29 years; Male), “After implementation, if we want to take feedback,
we cannot take it because of legal issue GDPR comes to forth and so, the implementation is
not that robust then” (Respondent no. 4; Aged 43 years; Male), and “From a service
perspective, such as <anonymized>, their delivery executives have gamification to deliver
quickly and good feedback, although they are contractual employees” (Respondent no. 5;
Aged 30 years; Male). Refer Figure 3 for Reviewed Theme 3.

Discussion
Diversity related challenges in the organization-specific factors reviewed theme, based on the
findings, include geographical diversity but what the informants were referring to was
specific to continents. It would be a challenge for an organization to implement gamification
in HRM in the USA compared to India and Europe because of low popularity in the USA Not
only at the country or continent level but challenges are also at the industry-level wherein
gamification, according to the informants, is relevant more in the industries that have
mundane or boring jobs compared to the industry that require creativity. The rationale was
that those who work in knowledge-intensive industry have jobs that are inherently enjoyable.
Even at the company level, the informants suggest that it is difficult to incorporate
gamification in the big companies due to the approvals required. On the other hand, it is
difficult to continue gamification post-implementation in the small companies. A comparison
between government and private organization was also drawn in which one of the informants
shared that it is extremely difficult to implement gamification in government organizations
because they simply do not understand it. Leadership-related challenging factors had mainly
to do with the top management of an organization. Most of the informants were of the view
that the leader has to be patient enough to wait for the outcomes to come which, in most of
informants’ experience, does not happen. The management also needs to support by
cooperating at each and every moment with the game designer to make the process and
people clear not only to the designer but also to their employees. Many a times, the companies
do not have any idea of what do they expect in terms of engagement outcomes or learning

Job-specific factors

Inputs Outcomes

Scope Congruence Game elements Measurement Effectiveness/ Feedback

Figure 3.
Thematic map for
reviewed theme 3
(job-specific factors)
Note(s): Oval represents reviewed themes, rectangle represents potential themes, and rounded rectangle represents codes
IJM outcomes from gamified HR activities. The two main process-related challenges were after-
sales and HR working in silos. It was interesting to find that one of the informants
experienced about no after-sales services are demanded by the top management. It means,
once the game is sold to the organization, it’s maintenance in terms of increasing its
effectiveness by continuously upgrading it is not taken care of. Another process related issue
was that the HR personnel often work in silos and they do not actually know about the needs
and wants of the employees as they do not have any in-house process to know that.
As far as employee-specific factors are concerned, it consists of pre and post
commencement of gamification. In the pre-commencement, by generation, the informants
had some contradictory experiences. One of the respondents revealed that if the leadership of
the company belongs to Generation Y, it is easy to explain and implement gamification, which
is not so easy in case of Generation X. The other respondent, on the other hand, opined that
the younger generation has lesser span of attention and they do not even get time for
gamification activities as many, in the informants’ own experience, do not even log in once.
Competence, which is another code, is another challenge as the employees need to techno-
savvy enough to play the game and also, their nature in terms of their values and personality
along with motivating factors may differ considerably. So, the same game may not be
working for all the employees in the same way. Some post-commencement challenges could
also be there. For example, sophophile effect which is that the employee might want to play
the next level in the game that does not really exist and that employees’ needs might remain
unsatisfied. Similarly, another issue is the dilettante infatuation wherein the employees often
do the gamified activity with great interest initially but later-on, that interest fades away.
This is an issue which most of the informants reported. It especially happens when the
employees are near to completing their certificate but then they stumble. Some employees,
because of their incompetence in playing the game, feel stressed and drop off.
Two job-specific factors also present a challenge to the organizations. The first one is
inputs to the gamified job such as scope. As informants shared, the learning outcomes, the
players, and the process needs to be clearly told to the designers so that there are clear
expectations. Second, there has to be a fit between what the job demands and what the
gamified activity does. Third, while there are some game elements that can be used for all
the employees but most of them need to customized to suit the job requirements. In outcomes,
the challenges are measuring the outcomes. The informants find that the companies face
issues pertaining to objectivity and comprehensiveness in measuring the extent to which the
learning outcomes have been achieved. It is primarily because the learning outcomes are
vague. Next, feedback about the effectiveness of the gamification is sometimes difficult to
obtain from the company because of regulations such as The General Data Protection
Regulation. As a consequence, the designers find it difficult to improve the game according to
the need of the job.

Theoretical implications
The aforementioned section discussed three reviewed themes contributing to the existing
theories of flow and engagement. While it is established in the literature that gamification
provides an experience of excitement in terms of flow and thereby engage employees, this
study reveals that there are certain challenges especially in the online gamification. In
specific, these challenges when taken care of may help employees attain the state of flow in
which they are fully immersed into their work cognitively, physically, and emotionally. This
study also augments the literature which argues that flow is context-specific by providing
specific issues that may arise due to contextual differences. Thus, in the context of
gamification among employees, this study provides insights into what exactly could be the
issues that inhibit engagement at work. Overall, these three reviewed themes are linked to
engagement which can be inferred from the informants’ responses. While the employee and Engaging
job-related challenges directly affect the engagement levels of the informant, organization- employees
specific challenges seem to interact with the employee- and job-specific challenges to affect
the engagement levels. For example, the leadership needs to be visionary as to what it wants
through
from the gamified activities. But then, the informants go ahead to say that this may happen gamification
when the HR is aware about the person and job well. Thus, in the presence of organization-
specific challenges the negative impact of employee- and job-specific challenges gets
exaggerated (see Figure 4).
The present study intertwines the flow theory with the engagement theory in the context
of gamified digital HRM. It has been previously argued that flow is a peak of an emotion
which and is momentary. Later, consistently making employees invest their cognitive,
physical, and emotional energies has been found to be a challenge in the responses of the
informants. It may thus be argued that the employees experience flow followed by
engagement. The results of this study suggest such an engagement, however, faces several
challenges at the employee, job, and organization level. Within the realm of online
gamification of HRM practices, the responses also suggest that these three factors are also
interlinked and seem to affect engagement at work. In that, the employee and job specific
factors impact engagement at work. These relationships are moderated by organization-
specific factors such that in the presence of conducive organizational factors, the negative
relationship between the job and the employee specific challenges and engagement at work
will be weakened.

Managerial implications
The findings of this study may directly be used by the practitioners, particularly the HR
practitioners, not as a remedy but as a caution before deciding to gamify their HR systems.
The study offers directions for firms in understanding the nuances of implementing
gamification, challenges faced during and after implementation, and possible ways to
address them. The insights from the data reflect that there exist a difference in opinion from
what theoretical understanding of the gamification and employee engagement is and how is
performed practically. Especially, the top-management needs to be aware of the role it needs
to play to make the gamification implementation and maintenance successful. The
informants suggested that clear learning outcomes along with strong leadership
determination are of paramount importance is executing the entire process right from idea
to effectiveness assessment. The implementation of gamified solutions would also differ in

Organization- specific factors

Diversity
Leadership
Process

Employee- specific factors

Pre-commencement
Post-commencement
Engagement at work

Job-specific factors
Figure 4.
Inputs The emergent
Outcomes framework
IJM firms based on their size, needs and resources. It is critical to understand that while HR
managers should understand the needs of the employees, they need to also invest time in
understanding which form of rewards and engagement practices would suit best for
employees. An appropriate need based implementation strategy should be designed by the
firms and pre testing of game elements should be done on smaller functions to begin with in
order to understand the effectiveness of those parameters. These needs and wants differ
generation-wise and context-wise, as already discussed in the previous sections of this paper.
Lastly, as gamification strategies differ from organizations, employees and their work profile,
it is critical for firms to put the three dimensions on a canvas to help the firms dynamically
select strategies to use the right game mechanics. This will help them achieve sutainability in
using gamification for employee engagement.

Limitations and directions for future research

While all the credibility and dependability measures were taken into consideration while
collecting and analysing data, this study does have a few limitations. One of the limitations
is the lack of awareness about gamification among HR practitioners which restricts the
authors to collect in-depth responses especially the technical side of it. Future studies, may
be after three years or so, may have more content, as the field of gamification in emerging
day by day. The second limitation is that the interview was conducted online, which has
some advantages such as proximity and cost saving but lacks the emotional connect.
However, due to the pandemic situation, interviews in-person were not possible. Thus, once
there is a state of normalcy, the future studies might like to verify the present study’s
findings and their applicability. Also, it is suggested to have an on-site focus group with a
mix of game designers and HR practitioners or/and independent consultants to not only
understand the problem in a comprehensive way but also reach to some mutually agreed
solution. While interviewing informants, one of the concerns raised by them was that
engagement through gamification often does not last long and it perishes as the game
becomes repetitive, predictable and boring. Thus, researchers in the future may like to work
on sustaining these high level of engagement levels that are triggered by gamified digital
HRM processes.

Conclusion
Based on the theories of flow and engagement, thematic analysis of gamification
practitioners’ responses revealed three themes namely individual, job, and organization-
specific factors. The emergent framework proposes a moderating role of organization-specific
factors in the relationship between individual and job-specific factors and engagement at
work. One of the important theoretical contributions of this paper includes integrating the
theory of flow and engagement in the gamified digital HRM context. To reap the benefits of
gamified digital HRM processes, organizations can take a cue from the findings of the present
study by creating a conducive environment to convert the engagement challenges into
opportunities. Researchers in the future are encouraged to work on providing quantitative
evidence for the same and explore sustainable engagement practices in the context of
gamified digital HRM.

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Further reading
Perryer, C., Celestine, N.A., Scott-Ladd, B. and Leighton, C. (2016), “Enhancing workplace motivation
through gamification: transferrable lessons from pedagogy”, The International Journal of
Management Education, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 327-335.

Corresponding author
Abhishek Behl can be contacted at: abhishekbehl27@gmail.com

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