Leveraging the Competitive Instinct in Your Employees

Human beings – including your employees – are naturally competitive. Millions of years of evolution have drummed into our brains that those who strive harder will get the food, shelter and a greater opportunity to pass on DNA. We’re psychologically rewarded for winning and now you can leverage competition in your company to motivate employees. In the corporate environment, this competitive instinct is a two-edged sword. Yes, it’s essential to motivate employees to achieve at their highest level. But competitiveness more strongly motivates individual success than corporate success. At its worse, it can cause stress and tension between employees, and the pursuit of individual goals at the expense of the company mission. Channel the competition for corporate success It’s up to you to channel the competitive instinct in directions that benefit your company. RealPage’s EasyLMS is generally described as a learning management system. That is, its core purpose is imparting knowledge and skills to employees. What is less understood is that EasyLMS is also a motivational tool designed to channel the competitive instinct in directions that benefit the company as a whole in addition to furthering your employees’ personal objectives. Motivate employees with gamification EasyLMS incorporates “gamification” to reward desired activities. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, gamification taps into the same drive that has made us love winning since we were children. It’s been a real sensation in the corporate world, because it is proving to make jobs more enjoyable while motivating employees to pursue what in EasyLMS are referred to as “achievements.” It’s been shown that these rewards do not have to be tangible: they can be as simple as virtual “badges” kept in a “trophy case.” That’s not surprising, considering there are people who stay awake for days on end simply...