Investigating the Efficacy of Gamification in an Online Positive Psychology Intervention (OPPI) Aimed at Increasing Employee Well-being

Investigating the Efficacy of Gamification in an Online Positive Psychology Intervention (OPPI) Aimed at Increasing Employee Well-being

Investigating the Efficacy of Gamification in an Online Positive Psychology Intervention (OPPI) Aimed at Increasing Employee Well-being

Amy McKinley

Abstract

"Employees are considered one of the most valuable resources in an organisation and ensuring that they are functioning efficiently is vital to an organisation’s success (Baptiste, 2008). One way for an organisation to support the optimal functioning of its employees is to ensure their well-being at work by implementing health and well-being interventions. Especially given the devastating impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on employees’ mental health (Mind, 2021).However, participation in employee health and well-being interventions is traditionally low (Poole et al., 2001; Howarth et al., 2018). Moreover, attrition in employee health and well-being interventions was strongly correlated to a lack of personal motivation to participate in health and well-being interventions and high levels of boredom experienced during the interventions (Edwards, 2012). Thus, there is a prevalent need for innovative strategies that motivate employees to actively participate in health and well-being interventions. One prominent innovation for health and well-being improvement is the development of serious games and gamified interventions using gamification (Wattanasoontorn et al., 2013). Research has shown that serious games and gamified interventions, if designed well, can increase one’s motivation and engagement, because they satisfy one’s innate desires through the implementation of intrinsically motivating game design elements (Johnson et al., 2016). Studies have shown that gamification can have a positive impact on employee well-being interventions (Kark, 2011; Ahtinen et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2013), but there is no empirical evidence showing that the increase in employee well-being was due to the implementation of gamification or just a result of the employee well-being intervention. Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za iii Therefore, the aim of this exploratory research study was to conduct a controlled field experiment (N = 26), to investigate the efficacy of a gamified Online Positive Psychology Intervention (OPPI) aimed at increasing employee well-being. The results of this study found significant support for one of the four hypotheses that were tested, and two of the four hypotheses indicated a trend towards significance. Thus, there was a trend towards a possible relationship between the effectiveness of gamification and the enhanced outcomes of the employee well-being intervention used in this study. The results of this study make an important contribution to research in the employee well-being domain as it provides preliminary evidence of the potential positive effects that gamification can have on the outcomes of employee well-being interventions."

Reference

McKinley, A. (2022). Investigating the efficacy of gamification in an online positive psychology intervention (OPPI) aimed at increasing employee well-being (Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University). https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/203922ae-f69d-46a0-9716-adef6639cf73/content

Keywords

well-being, gamified, intervention