Since 1965, trivia has been a popular game in academic circles, newspapers, and neighborhood bars alike. In recent years, the digital revolution catapulted trivia to mobile phones. An estimated 85 million people “addicted” to the mobile app Trivia Crack in 2015.
Given its popularity, it should be no surprise that leading tech companies are using apps for trivia games in the workplace as an enterprise knowledge sharing solution.
Google Launches a Trivia Product in 2011
In 2011, Google launched “A Google a Day”, a popular online trivia game that allowed users to answer random questions for a chance to accumulate points and rewards. Questions were often cross-listed in the New York Times, creating offline momentum that would encourage sharing and traffic back to the digital platform.
Source: www.agoogleaday.com
Since Google’s installation of a trivia game, trivia games for work have since quietly evolved into a productivity tool, becoming a staple for companies looking to grow and track both internal and external engagement. Here are a few practical trivia uses for your organization to explore:
3 Practical Uses for Workplace Trivia Games
1. Increase Staff Engagement and MotivationGallup’s famous 2011 workplace productivity survey found that 71% of workers are either not engaged or actively disengaged from their jobs. This lack of workplace fulfilment is often attributed to boredom or corporate structures that routinize daily tasks.
Enter the importance of workplace trivia games. Companies can utilize trivia to set up rotational cross-functional teams to compete and gain rewards. This incentivized team engagement focuses on “quick wins” that can be extremely beneficial to employee confidence and motivation.
While some gamification critics are concerned that games in the workplace don’t mix, statistics offer a different perspective. Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken: How Games Make Us Better and Can Change The World, found that the average gamer is 35 years old and that 61% of senior executives surveyed say they currently take daily game breaks at work.
2. Measure Event Success and Cultivate Experience
The relationship between trivia games and events is simple: gaming allows the chance for event hosts and attendees to interact with each other in a meaningful way. Gaming is quantifiable, measurable, and stimulates a sense of common purpose and engagement.
In 2015, mobile application LINE tested a gamification trivia product (LINE@) for an event hosted at a popular videogame festival workshop. The test market? A large group of teenagers whose attention spans were being pulled in many directions.
The result? Over 20% engagement and a high-level of participation actively engaging with the complex content that was tested. A smashing success given the crowd, event, and first time use of event gamification for the crowd:
Source: gecom.es
3. Knowledge Sharing
One of the challenges in a competitive workplace is that some employees might be hesitant to share their knowledge, particularly in sales environments. The good news is that many gamification trivia solutions offer full customization of workplace trivia games. Curated questions and answers to be presented seamlessly.
The example below, a snapshot of trivia solution Atrivity, gives an example of a custom and simple trivia question that was created to drive knowledge sharing for an organization.
Source: www.compettia.com
This flexibility can be utilized to create topic or goal oriented workplace trivia games that can be retargeted, edited, and modified at anytime. With this level of customization, trivia can be used for any industries ranging from financial services to hotels and even restaurants.
