10. Play the game -- literally

At most companies, playing computer games is grounds for reprimand if not dismissal. At the Regence Group, it's encouraged. Of course, employees of the Oregon-based Blue Cross/Blue Shield provider aren't playing ordinary games; they're engaged in a real-time incentive program that rewards them for meeting specified goals.

For example, customer service agents who resolve a certain number of problems on the first call may receive 10 tokens, which they can use to play an online slot machine or a bass fishing game, says Regence HR director Ryan Kenney. After they rack up points inside the game, employees can exchange them for a debit card worth actual cash.

While it sounds like fun and games, there's real science behind it, says Brooks Mitchell, a professor of management at the University of Wyoming and CEO of Snowfly, which designed the incentive system used by Regence. "It's called behaviour shaping," he says. "If you can reinforce little behaviours daily or even hourly, the big behaviours will occur by themselves later on."

When employees are recognized and rewarded, Mitchell says, attendance, job satisfaction, and employee retention rise. A meta-study conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Central Florida found that workplace incentive programs increased productivity by 22 percent on average, and monetary rewards were twice as effective as the nonmonetary ones.

Mitchell admits Snowfly is best suited for entry-level tasks where performance can be easily measured, such as call centers and help desks. But Regence has broader ambitions. At press time, 1,400 of the company's 6,000 employees were using Snowfly in a pilot program, but Kenney says they hope eventually to roll it out throughout most of the company, including the IT department - to, say, reward programmers for meeting deadlines or submitting code with a minimal number of bugs.

The key to the program's success is sitting down with each employee and coming up with ways to measure their performance objectively, Kenney says.

"What excites the HR geek in me is how Snowfly helps employees understand what matters most," Kenney says. "We want to build employee engagement, align them with the strategic objectives of the company, and hold onto our people longer. Employee retention alone will ultimately save us millions of dollars."