Gamification cont.

So - following on from the previous post what have been the thoughts on what to actually allocate badges for? Seemed like an easy one at first but became a bit mind bending pretty quickly.

Do you allocate badges for tangible activities/achievements - such as these the team came up with off the top of their head;

• Training quizzes passed (1st, 5th, every 10 thereafter) 
• Completion of a training series 
• Billable hours worked (1st, 40th, 100th, 500th, every 500 thereafter) 
• Employee grade 
• H&S TIPs completed (1st, 5th, every 10 thereafter) 
• Completion of Project Management training 
• Revenue oversight for PMs ($100K, $500K, every $500K thereafter? no idea on this one) 
• Company Profile completed (Mysite) 
• Professional Licensure 

or link them to actual company certificates - such as;

• Advanced Manaement Programme Certificate 
• European Networking Programme Certificate 
• IOSH Certificate 
• PM Certificate 
• Risk Mngt Certificate 
• Webinar Presenter 
• Quest Achiever 
• SuperQuest Achiever 

The advantage of doing this is ease of coordination and management by the business. These activities are already tracked and monitored as part of internal staff development.

However, then the question is, what is the point of the badge? They then are simply measuring achievements in  a simple tick-box manner. Is that wrong - a question still to be debated? 

OR - should badges be allocated based more around skill or capability measures as judged by a community, peer groups, clients, competitor networks etc? This would have the advantage that it is more of a true representation of capabilities, rather than ticking the box for a given training course. You may not have your PhD in Particle Physics (or railway signalling) but you can be acknowledges for your participation and contribution to the field (Honorary Doctorate style) by other leaders in the filed. This to me seems a much better use of badge allocation. The second question - still to be debated.  

As an example of how this would work LinkedIn has recently introduced 'endorsements' - where your network of contacts can 'endorse' the skills you say you have as part of your LinkeIn profile. Its fascinating seeing this grow - its only been put in place recently and is still in the phase where people are finding out how it works and what it all means.

Anyway, the fun continues.....