CITT News

Gamification is an increasingly utilized method of building engagement and motivation across learning and workforce environments. This three-part editorial series explores gamification in freight, policy, and workforce development and will help to further inform discussions for the International Urban Freight (INUF) Conference.

When asked to think back to the most enjoyable moments in childhood, games are often one of the first things that come to mind for many people. Competition, challenges, creativity, and cooperation are all hallmarks of enjoyable childhood activities. As adults, our desire for fun, engagement, and self-challenge do not decrease, though our exposure to games often does. Games can make difficult activities become rewarding and motivate people to stay engaged even when the task at hand is less appealing. “Gamification” is the process of taking the elements of games that make them most enjoyable and incorporating those elements into learning and work environments. The goal is to increase engagement, interest, productivity, and motivation for students and workers in these environments. Increasingly, industries across the world are looking at the basic psychologies of what keeps people engaged and seeking to utilize these elements to create a more productive, engaged, and satisfied workforce. This three-part series will explore what the building blocks of gamification are and how it is being used in the world of trade and transportation, including freight, policy, and workforce development. Part One will serve as an exploration of how gamification is being used across the supply chain.

There are basic elements that are commonly referenced as being key to “gamifying” a system. Among them are point systems, badges, increasing levels, and challenges. Some of the most successful and well-known examples of gamification today are learning-based apps such as DuoLingo or Khan Academy. In these apps, participants earn points for each mini lesson that they complete. DuoLingo awards crowns and allows learners to unlock new lessons upon completions, while in Khan Academy, learners build on their skill tree. In DuoLingo, points are redeemable for a variety of perks, including customizing the app, bonus lessons, and quizzes that allow you to move ahead more quickly. Khan Academy uses a badge system that awards users based on specific achievements such as a certain number of hours studied or maintaining an error-free streak. DuoLingo and Khan Academy also encourage peer interaction –Khan Academy allows students to connect with instructors and peers and do lessons together, while DuoLingo employs a leaderboard allowing users to compare their weekly scores with peers. By combining both individual competition and group competition, these apps harness many of the natural motivations that humans have to compete, have fun, and excel in their activities; it allows users to tap into those drives to push their learning engagement.

Increasing motivation is a significant issue in freight and logistics. A 2012 study by Link, Müller-Dauppert, and Jung found that motivation among logistics workers is much lower than in other fields. However, motivation is necessary to ensure accuracy and efficiency in these fields as the physical and human infrastructure of thousands of businesses at all levels rely on them functioning smoothly. An area that has begun leveraging gamification expertly is the trucking industry. G&P Trucking, a company based in the Southeast United States, decided to introduce gamification when their accident rate started going up among drivers (story available here). They introduced an app called the d2Go Drive Challenge App to motivate drivers to save on gas, not brake harshly, and engage more safely on the road. Using video and data from the trucks, the app tracks how well each driver is maneuvering on the road. Safe driving is rewarded by deducting points, and the drivers with the lowest points are shown on leaderboards in the app. Drivers with high points are referred to in-house driving coaches. The company rolled out cash prizes, $250 every week for the driver with the best score, and $1000 every month for the overall best driver of the month based on the statistics from the app. The results were significant, and the company saw a massive reduction in accidents and accident-causing behavior such as slamming on brakes or following too closely.

The supply chain has been tested more than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. As services ramp up and cities begin returning to pre-COVID activities, maintaining a robust workforce in the supply chain can be a challenge in part due to the perception that the work is mundane and repetitious. Manhattan Associates, a supply chain solution company based out of Atlanta, Georgia, has turned to gamification as a tool to help increase engagement, efficacy, and worker satisfaction in workforces. They have developed a workplace system for warehouse companies across the country looking to increase worker efficacy and well-being. They found that many supply chain companies such as Amazon measure worker productivity to target problem areas, whereas Manhattan Associates prefers using worker measurements as an incentive system. They prefer to have workers compete against an hourly standard (such as number of boxes packed or number of errors). They emphasize that accuracy and safety are just as important if not more important than speed in their systems. When employees achieve their challenge marker, typically 100% accuracy, 100% productivity, and no accidents in a given time period, they are awarded points that can be redeemed for real incentives like gift cards or drawings for big-ticket items. Manhattan Associates emphasizes that their system is less about making work “fun” and more about increasing workers’ intrinsic drive to perform well, take pride in their work, and create a more efficient and satisfied workplace.

Gamification offers many potential avenues for incentivizing workers and creating more efficient, accurate, and safe supply chain functioning. Gamification need not involve expensive programs or app-based technology. Simple measures such as recording the number of days a team is accident-free and offering prizes are prime examples of gamification that many efficient and productive companies have been employing for decades. Technological advances, however, have opened up a new world of opportunities to increase worker engagement, satisfaction, and productivity in ways that have not before been possible. Gamification in the workplace is still in the early stages in many arenas and shows potential to be used as an incredible aid in the supply chain, freight, and logistics fields. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that can create simulations and virtual realities may offer important developments for logistics planning and provide support to logistics workers assessing options to solve supply chain-related problems. They are increasingly valuable training tools as well. As AI technology continues to develop, gamification elements that harness intrinsic human motivation will be key factors contributing to the development of the supply chain workforce.