Research shows that gaming can boost workplace productivity
You might think playing games is isolating, unsocial and purely escapist. However, research has shown that gaming can help us problem-solve, analyse, and process information. It can even help reduce stress. Games, from playing poker in a casino to console-based first-person shooters, can actually play a hugely positive role in how productive we are in the workplace.
It might surprise some but a study by professors at Brigham Young University found that work teams who had just been formed experienced 20% better productivity on the tasks they subsequently carried out after playing video games.
Indeed, Super Better, the book by Jane McGonigal, has revealed ways video games can improve our mental wellbeing and work-based skills. Likewise, personal development specialist Blaz Kos says poker, chess and strategic boardgames are beneficial to strategising in real-world situations as well as better understanding our strengths.
Isabela Granic, writing in the American Psychologist, highlighted two games – World of Warcraft and FarmVille – as examples of how video games could help people build “real world” skills because players learn in a virtual world “whom to trust, whom to reject, and how to most effectively lead a group.”
Elsewhere, real time strategy game StarCraft has been championed for supporting our capacity to critically evaluate a situation. Through its conflict-based gameplay, the game helps us to deliver an appropriate response as we establish the tactics to lead battles, encouraging players to execute successful strategic plans.
Nottingham Trent University’s professor of gambling studies, Mark Griffiths, said in a paper he co-authored, that poker, for example, could enhance not just obvious skills like critical thinking, goal orientation, and working with numbers but interpersonal skills, self-control and learning how to approach challenges in a pragmatic way. Importantly, these collective skills improve a person’s “employability” giving them a better chance of success in the workplace.
Certainly, with the popularity of online casinos today, more and more people are playing poker. From gambling responsibly (setting limits, working within budgets, controlling emotions) to taking care when online (such as using reputable operators with a good track record) and knowing how to manage money (such as making informed decisions about where to gamble thanks to, for example, casinowithdrawal.co.uk explaining best practice ways to get your winnings from your casino to your bank).
If businesses need any further clue as to how playing in the casino can boost workplace productivity look no further than Harvard Law School. It was here that professor Charles Neeson started to use Texas Hold’em for teaching purposes, acknowledging that people who are smart and successful in life are generally good at poker.
Similarly, research has also shown that letting employees play games while at work can boost productivity. Research at Michigan State University found that gaming can stimulate the imagination while the University of Central Florida found that “gaming” breaks could improve cognitive performance, helping employees to be more adept at the tasks in front of them.
So, can gaming help productivity in the workplace? The answer appears to be “yes”. Bringing games into the office environment may be just as beneficial as encouraging the workforce to play games in their free time.
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