Gamification's impact on manufacturing: Enhancing job motivation, satisfaction and operational performance with smartphone‐based gamified job design

Abstract

AbstractGamification is defined as applying game design elements to non‐game contexts. The integration of gamification into the workplace adds a stimulating and captivating game‐like layer to the working experience of employees. This is predicted to improve their positive affect at work and operational performance to a certain extent. With the ubiquity of smartphones and Internet technology, smartphone‐based interactive operations can better facilitate the implementation of gamification in work processes. Against a backdrop of a drastic transformation facing the Chinese equipment manufacturing industry, we gamified a number of computer numerical control machine operational jobs. A gamified job design framework was proposed, based on the job characteristics model and the game elements hierarchy. To achieve gamification in this context, a smartphone application was designed. We then hypothesized that smartphone‐based gamified job design (SGJD) would enhance participants’ three key indicators, namely, (i) job motivation, (ii) job satisfaction, and (iii) operational performance. We also analyzed how participants’ willingness to embrace gamified job design, known as “consent,” affected the improvement in the three key indicators. The results illustrated that SGJD significantly increased participants’ job motivation, job satisfaction, and operational performance. Furthermore, our experiment showed that consent to SGJD was positively correlated to the improvement in job motivation. However, no significant correlation was observed between consent to SGJD and an improvement in job satisfaction or operational performance.