By: Lucy Wyndham

UNDATED (NewsDakota.com) – The American labor market is, as a whole, strongly leaning towards employees – but North Dakota is experiencing some of the worst churn. Education, catering, and healthcare are three industries in which turnover has been significant, with Jamestown’s North Dakota State Hospital seeing an eye-watering 21.19% annual turnover rate. While some factors that contribute to turnover are unavoidable, others, chiefly concerning the employee experience, are more easy to tackle. Moving to a gamified system of employee management, from training, to performance, to development, can help to improve the employee experience and retain key workers for the long term.

Changing how training works

Training is a necessary part of every job, but it can often become a dreaded exercise. Boring seminars, lengthy workshops, and plain e-learning can all make it a difficult experience. Onward training is also important, and leans into development – but getting it right at every stage is crucial. Indeed, one of the flashpoints surrounding the ongoing teacher’s dispute concerns training, according to the Grand Forks Herald. All industries are incredibly busy at the current time, but education is exceptionally busy as it gets to grips with new ways of learning and meeting the demand of full school attendance. Mixing training into the day-to-day management of the workplace is crucial and, according to experts, gamification is the way forward. By turning training into bite size pieces which can then be ‘beaten’ in a way akin to a game, it breaks down tasks into manageable chunks, keeps employees engaged, and still meets regulatory requirements.

Productivity management

The matter of managing productivity is crucial in helping a business to remain profitable and also ensuring that employees are performing to the best of their ability and meeting their contractual goals. However, as the New Yorker highlights, many workers are tired of productivity culture, finding that an ultra-focus on numbers and performance indicators impedes their ability to get good work done. Once again, gamification can help with this; moving away from rigid targets, and instead looking at a holistic view of output, with the gamification helping to meld the need for expediency with high quality output – and will improve the employee experience.

Engaging with onward development

North Dakota is hardly short on work ethic. According to the Center Square, the state is the hardest working in the country, as per a recent labor report. What may be lacking is development – workers apply themselves consistently to their role, but what can they expect in terms of growing within their industry? Just as gamifying the training process, giving time over to professional development and then working with providers to create easily identified and engaging new learning packages will help to retain high quality workers.

Gamification of the workplace can help to retain workers. In North Dakota, where turnover is high from business to business, this could be a silver bullet to help rectify a serious issue in the labor market. It’s an investment in employees that businesses will stand to benefit from.