LEVELING UP THE WORKPLACE: HOW GAMIFICATION FOSTERS IDEAL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PRACTICES
Traditionally, workplace training can be boring to attend when the content could be more engaging and interactive with participants. Essential topics of equity and community engagement need to be fun and easily applicable to real-life scenarios. Mastering community engagement as a form of communication with key stakeholders addresses environmental justice issues and has the ability to earn trust and build relationships with marginalized communities. It gives value, meaning, and significance to the individuals being represented. The purpose of this study was to understand the opportunities and challenges of gamification in workplace training centered around equity and community engagement decision-making and how developing an engaging and educational tool can be utilized to communicate environmental topics. I interned with the Port of Seattle and focused my efforts on creating a community engagement board game catered to train employees on best engagement practices during Port-related projects. The game content included clear rules, storytelling, timers, and collaborative and strategic elements that allowed quality engagement between all players. I also conducted a post-interview to evaluate participants on the effectiveness of gamification. As a result, players expressed high engagement, enjoyability, more understanding of equity, better relationships with colleagues, and the proposed application of workplace training. This information unveiled the possibility for gamification to be used to communicate any environmental topics which helped me understand how to empower communities and stakeholders in future outreach efforts in addition to educating those that have difficulty in understanding environmental justice.
