Welcome to this week's question of gamification. My name is An Coppens. I'm the chief game changer at Gamification Nation and also the show host for this show. This week's question is what are the Learning and Development opportunities that gamification can unlock in the workplace? A big question and it was one that I was asked by a journalist recently who was writing about gamification and other new technologies in the workplace and gamification is obviously considered as one of those So my answer was, first of all to say it's a big question. What are the opportunities? Well the opportunities are quite large. If you think about it most young people will have played games at some point. They may not all be lets say Esports Gamers or really into the big multiplayer online games, but most people have used regularly social media regular games like things you play on your mobile the casual variety and in the wider spectrum of games like multiplayer online games, role-playing games. I would even consider Sports board Games Etc as part of the larger gaming picture. So most young people know that and most young people have on their devices things that are gamified from the get-go. Then they end up in the workplace and they come across often very archaic looking systems or boring interfaces of the things that we use every day. I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with your Word and Excel and Office products, absolutely, nothing wrong, very functional very, you know very much fit for purpose. So you wouldn't expect there to be game mechanics on top of it. But what gamification can unlock is productivity to use those tools, productivity to complete. So if we look out workplace productivity most managers would love to know how long are my people working on things? What does it take for them to complete an item Etc who's in trouble? Who needs my help? Who's actually doing very well and you know happy to keep plodding along without any hand-holding or anything else? So those kinds of things are really vital for a manager to know and vital for a person to understand. And often for the individual we don't get feedback on our productivity or performance until it's too late or the person either quits or you as a manager have to have a word with the fact that you know, it's not as good as you wanted it to be but if people knew as and when they went how things were progressing and what was good about it, you know, they would already be at a better starting point. So that's the first thing I would say. So what kind it unlock? More productivity, more feedback without having to be there in person. I only think there's still a place for the person face-to-face conversation too, I so wouldn't rule out one over the other but we work with a number of systems where you can have dashboards to see about your performance to look at completion to see how you're doing within the team, to get basically completion rewards, completion unlocking either rewards in the shape of little items or something that you can eventually trade in for real-world items. So whether that is a badge or real-world item, it's a reward for something you've done or simply a dashboard that gives you the impression. Okay. This is where I'm at. This is where I need to go. This is how we're doing. This is how my work is actually having an impact on the larger company because most of us, especially -- and I remember when I was in large organizations, would love to know how our work actually makes a difference to anyone because even the smallest item or smallest thing can have an impact but you don't always know. So knowing the bigger picture goals and how your personal goals play into that can be very interesting very rewarding and actually make people feel good about what they do. I truly believe in workplace productivity and gamification.