Managing information: are you game?

In this blog, I want to think a little more about how you can use gamification theory to support good records and information management.

If you’re a regular reader of our information management blog, you’ll know that we go on about three things: digital information systems and tools, information policies and processes, and Star Wars. Putting Jedi archives aside for a moment – without the right behaviour within your tools, policies and processes, it’s difficult to have a handle on your information management. By this I mean what records your organisation creates, where they are stored, and what value they hold.

Good information management therefore is dependent on influencing employees to behave in a particular way, follow set filing processes and engage with the tools you provide them with. Ultimately it’s getting information management embedded in their everyday work, that’s the utopia we’re aiming for.

So forget what makes Super Mario rescue Princess Peach again and again. The real question is: what motivates workers to handle and manage information in the right way? Well, I’d suggest as information managers we consider and apply the following concepts:

Competition (think three letter names at the top of an arcade machine leaderboard)

This is a powerful motivator, pitting people against one another in pursuit of winning or achieving something. Okay, a slightly vulgar way of describing it. However both ‘being the best’ and ‘not being the worst’ are things that drive individuals, teams or even entire organisations to behave in a certain way. By using gamification to influence information management, you could think about how to measure and feedback performance. Statistics, league tables, and compliance measures are all things that, if presented in the right way, could drive a change in some people’s behaviour and priorities simply because they are benchmarked against others. For example you could do this to measure and publicise how much teams are filing into an electronic document and records management system (EDRM), the size of individual email inboxes, FOI response rates etc…

Achievement (think trophies, award points and badges that can be earned by playing)

The carrot rather than the stick. Yes, I could talk about financial rewards as a wonderful motivator for people at work, but in the context of current budgets that’s not an easy thing to implement. Having a sense of achievement isn’t purely about being rewarded by money; most people at work are motivated by a sense of doing a good job and having that confirmed by their colleagues, managers and themselves. By making information management explicitly part of employee objectives along with reasonable but challenging targets, and positive feedback, people will feel like they are rewarded for following the rules.

Altruism (think of those multi-player games where you work on behalf of a team)

The natural desire to help others in spite of the consequences to ourselves. While good filing does indeed support our own work, another motivator for action is this idea that something which you dutifully label and save will one day be found and used by someone else. This draws upon a core concept for gamification, which is about adding a narrative. To enable this, think about explicitly telling the story of the information lifecycle, putting each employee at the centre of what happens, and how certain action/inaction will affect others.

Self-expression (think about games where you can choose your own username, appearance, and be your own character)

Allowing people to be themselves within a world of boundaries and rules: that’s a challenge for computer game designers and information managers alike. It doesn’t matter what computer systems people use at work, they will find their own way of working with it to create and save their information. Good information management then is about understanding what information employees create, and allowing them to express themselves and their work in a way that shares knowledge and experience across the organisation. For self-expression to be a motivator, users should feel enabled by systems and rules, not restricted.

Closure (think about the final boss level on Sonic the Hedgehog where you save the world by jumping on Dr Robotnik’s head three times)

‘Finishing something off’ is another motivation to keep people engaged (in the same way that hopefully you’re still reading this blog to get some closure??). The point here is to ensure that employees know that managing information is a part of their core responsibility at work, and that their normal duties aren’t finished without considering how they capture a record of it. That’s not to say that information management is an afterthought – indeed there are significant risks around waiting until something is finished before you start filing – but understanding how to handle information appropriately and following through with that process will provide people with closure.

There’s plenty more to gamification than this, and you can find a wealth of ideas and techniques online about the how and why of constructing narratives, awarding achievement badges, ‘levelling up’, virtual currencies, progress bars etc… I hope though that this has given you food for thought when applying this theory to the information management discipline.

Managing government information doesn’t succeed without influencing the behaviour of those who create, receive and store it. Understanding what motivates them is the first step for getting them to do it in an appropriate way.

Thanks for reading. As always if something here has sparked your interest, please get in touch with us below. The first three comments posted will receive 5 virtual points! (Now that’s gamification for you…)