According to M2 Research, companies will be spending around $2 billion on gamification services by 2015. “By that same point, Gartner Group’s Brian Burke forecasts that 70 percent of the Global 2000 will employ gamification techniques, but that 80 percent of those projects will fail unless they’re designed thoughtfully,” writes GigaOM.

Guest contributor Gabe Zicherman, author of “The Gamification Revolution,” has “looked at hundreds of leading companies that have successfully leveraged gamification in the enterprise to see how they found success.”

For GigaOM, Zicherman writes of five ways companies are using gamification, the first being recruitment and hiring. One example is when Google “posted a billboard in Silicon Valley with a tough math question that led users through a series of game-like challenges, and eventually to a special job application queue; those who could solve the puzzle were ‘pre-screened’ in a fun way.”

“The U.S. Army-developed ‘America’s Army’ game has brought millions of potential recruits to the attention of the armed forces and has become its most cost-effective recruitment strategy,” notes Zicherman.

Companies can also use gamification for employee training and development (such as the role playing “My Marriott Hotel”), and employee feedback through gamification-based recognition systems like Work.com, DueProps and PropstoYou.

Additionally, it can tackle issues of health and wellness. “One critical approach to increasing employee performance is by helping to improve their health and wellness. Besides having the effect of improving cognition, it also results in reduced absenteeism (and thus health insurance costs, too),” writes Zicherman.

Lastly, gamification is successful when used for creating new profit centers. For example, “global consulting giant NTTData has built a platform called GO! that enables its 60,000 worldwide employees to gamify BPM and professional development, helping the company close and retain clients,” he writes.