We all know that understanding a company and its tools, products and services, is essential for organizational success. Knowing how to excite new employees and engage existing employees with relevant and interesting materials is key.
Renegade Communications is fortunate to be at the forefront of using gamification for client employee training programs. We have worked with our diverse client base to both enhance existing training programs and create new sales and engagement tools.
Gamification applies game elements into non-gaming processes to make them more enjoyable. Gaming techniques and mechanics can be used to motivate people to achieve learning and performance goals. This creates an improved learning experience, making boring topics fun to learn, even compliance training!
The gamification industry is large. According to Vynz Research, it is estimated to be worth $5.3 billion. It is expected to grow at a rate of 32.7% over the next eight years. Gamification is commonly used in apps, websites, and social media. As we can attest to, it has become popular in training programs too. And these statistics speak for themselves:
Gamification introduces game features such as points, badges and others to traditional training courses and modules. Psychological principles used in gamification can engage learners using real-life scenarios. This encourages employees to try even difficult tasks, despite the possibility of failure. By encouraging active participation, collaboration and socialization, learning becomes inclusive.
When it comes to corporate training, a gamification approach can improve the employee recruitment process, increase retention and facilitate the adoption of new software. Additionally, implementing gamification can also improve the performance of individual employees. Your workforce can benefit from gamification by helping prevent interest loss in training, especially with virtual/deskless employees.
Rachel Nemeth of Opus provides some great, simple guidelines:
First, consider the training topic. For example, gamification featuring a topic related to company culture, values or soft skills is a good concept for training.
Second, understand your learner audiences, as some topics may be more appropriate for a certain age or experience level. Topics related to team building may be better for more experienced workers than for entry level workers.
Finally, consider the outcomes you are seeking as every gamification course is not created equal. Does the employee need to recite information, complete a daily task, communicate with a guest or execute a special skill? Identifying these learning outcomes will help give you an understanding of what gamification technique is best for your course or program.
Before you start, set your goals – gamified training needs to be built around getting employees to reach specific outcomes. Goals should be clear to learners from the start and be related to completing tasks or gaining more expertise in a subject.
As lessons are created, incorporate game elements, including checkpoint quizzes, interactive role-playing scenarios and flashcard games. Point-based quizzes and trivia are a great way to help employees quantify their learning and identify areas for improvement.
We also like the idea of providing scorecards as progress summaries that show details about the performance of an individual or team. Stats can be personalized with the learner's name, profile photo, experience points, badges, leaderboard standing and level progress. Reinforcement of information and skills is important. Continue to include these elements in mini games to build long-term behaviors.
Now that we have a framework for employee training gamification, let’s discuss techniques to recognize and reward employees.
Are you looking to use gamification and incentives to boost employee engagement and productivity? We have successful experience and would be delighted to assist you! It starts with a simple discussion to understand your goals, so we can create a gamification plan that fits your needs.
