[abakker]

Even further than just the Overjustification Effect, it is important to point out that as soon as you introduce the concept of work-as-game, you turn work into a competition, where you are specifying a successful outcome. Then the players(employees) have to choose rational strategies to "win".

A major problem in enterprise gamification efforts is when the rules, strategies, and outcomes conflict with the ultimate business objectives in the first place. Others here are correct to cite examples where optimal strategy to win a game differs from the goal of the company. e.g. to rank customer service agents based on customer calls handled, not the outcome of the calls.

Ultimately, additional complexity added to almost any job will backfire in some way. Creating a situation where employees need to both do the job and win the game is problematic, made worse when you are already providing them with the compensation for them to do the job, and the game mechanics that favor winning the game.

There is a parallel here between Gamification of Work, and Enterprise Social Networks (Yammer, Chatter, etc.) where these collaboration suites have had trouble catching on, since they were additive to the existing process of email. It tends not to matter much that the UI/features are better for a wider array of collaborative tasks if they have to be used in addition to the pre-existing systems. Collaboration software competes with time spent collaborating by other means, gamification competes with time spent working toward other (more relevant goals).