Get to know fleet gamification
Good drivers are hard to come by. Bad drivers can be hard to let go because of the industry-wide shortage. Your choices may seem limited if a driver keeps speeding, causes a preventable accident or refuses to follow company protocol. Gamification is another option in your smart fleet management toolkit—one that more and more companies implement to make their fleets safer and more efficient.
Fleet gamification creates more options for:
- taking control of fleet performance
- retaining your best drivers
- for an extended period of time
- coaching drivers who need direction
Welcome to a three-part series, in which we explain what fleet gamification is, who’s using it and how you can implement it to make your drivers safer and more efficient. Let’s get started.
What gamification is
We all use mobile apps, some of which are downright addictive, such as:
- games that reward you the more you play
- fitness apps that reward you when you reach goals
- crossword puzzles built on friendly competition
These apps are all perfect examples of gamification. In educational settings, gamification has been linked to increasing physical development, engagement levels, teachability and creative learning in students. Recently companies and organizations have implemented gamification to engage customers and grow business.
Gamification rewards the brain.
Gamification uses basic human psychology to make boring or mundane activities fun by rewarding behavior, which triggers the pathway in the brain that releases dopamine. That same pathway tells the brain to replicate the action to earn the reward and release more dopamine. As long as you keep rewarding people for doing what you want, they’ll want to keep doing it.
Why gamification works
Users enjoy autonomy.
Successful gamification rewards users for desired actions and reinforces their inclination to perform the actions again. Reliable rewards in exchange for repeated actions makes users self-motivated to succeed. They do what you want because they want to, not because they have to.
Improvements are clear.
Users working toward goals can visually track their progress. They see where they started and follow the data around their ongoing performance. Programs that reward users as they reach milestones make the journey seem easier to manage.
By tracking their status in an engaging, straightforward way, users see:
- their starting point
- how far they’ve come
- how far they have to go
- where they stand compared to others
With the right technology, fleet managers can establish fleet gamification programs to incentivize their drivers toward specific goals such as safer driving.
Achievements are the focus, not failures.
Remember, rewarding an achievement makes a person’s brain release dopamine and drives them to repeat the behavior. Like mobile apps reward users when they reach goals, other programs can be used to reward self-motivated behavior. In particular, fleet gamification programs help drivers track their achievements, incentivizing them to keep progressing.
Healthy competition drives improvement.
Humans love to compete, with themselves and with others. Gamification connects competition with self-improvement by making good behavior the key to winning. Much like how mobile apps such as crossword puzzles and word games rely on competition to draw people in and keep them playing.
About Zonar
Founded in 2001, Zonar has pioneered smart fleet management solutions throughout trucking and vocational industries. Zonar helps fleets of all sizes maximize the use of their assets with technology solutions dedicated to improving compliance, efficiency, maintenance, safety, and tracking. Cloud-based services with open APIs drive Zonar’s smart fleet solutions by making it easy for fleet owners and managers to stay connected to their fleets and operators to dispatch. Headquartered in Seattle and part of the Continental AG family—a global leader in automotive technology— Zonar also has a Technology Development Center in downtown Seattle, a regional office in Cincinnati and a distribution center outside of Atlanta.