Corporate training gamification strategies could be the ultimate way to enhance learning and development programs for teams. In a world that’s constantly evolving, employees are becoming increasingly reliant on upskilling and reskilling strategies to stay efficient and productive. In fact, studies show the right training program can improve productivity by 10%.
What’s more, by investing in training strategies, companies can improve employee retention, attract new talent in a skills-short market, and boost engagement levels.
The problem is, while training and development are crucial to the success of any employee, old-fashioned training methods often fail to keep teams engaged. Up to $13.5 million is wasted every year on ineffective training strategies. Gamification could be the answer.
What is Gamification in Employee Training?
Gamification is the art and science of implementing “gamified” elements into various scenarios. With gamified training, companies leverage competitions, score cards, and fun challenges to inspire and motivate their staff members. The purpose of this strategy is to leverage psychology to engage learners and make them more likely to take on repetitive tasks.
Gamification in education has been proven to improve the recruitment and onboarding process, improve employee retention, and even ensure the adoption of new software. It’s no wonder the market is set to reach a value of $30.7 billion by 2025.
While the exact features of corporate training gamification implemented by each business may vary, most gamification strategies include the use of:
- Goals: Clear goals give employees something to work towards. With SMART goal setting strategies, companies can align team members around a specific go to market strategy, improve collaboration, and set everyone up for success.
- Entertaining lessons: Corporate training gamification strategies revolve around making learning fun. They use things like quizzes, challenges, and even actual game applications to entertain people while they learn. Some gamification methods even use interactive roleplaying, to immerse people within specific situations.
- Competitive elements: A key part of using gamification in education is implementing competitive elements. Badges, points, and leaderboards encourage friendly competition, and motivate learners to work harder and accomplish more.
- Rewards: With gamified training, companies reward their employees with more than just new knowledge. They might gain an opportunity to attend an event, or get a bonus on their next paycheck. Incentives help to keep learners engaged.
- Scorecards: With scorecards, business leaders can monitor the evolving needs of employee training, learn more about how certain strategies work within their team, and assess the progress of different team members.
- Analytics: Gamified training provides insights into valuable metrics businesses can use to enhance their educational strategy over time. Everything from progress reports, to insights into which team members are winning the most awards can be extremely useful.
The Benefits of Gamification in Training and Development
So, why use corporate training gamification in your business? The simple answer is that engagement is crucial to ensuring the success of any training strategy. With gamification in education, you’re more likely to motivate your employees to stick with their training sessions. What’s more, you can boost employee motivation with the use of clear goals and KPIs.
Increasingly, studies have begun to show that gamification in education delivers incredible results. Game-based learning leads to an increase of 34.75% in student performance, and around 67% of students say gamified training is more motivating and engaging.
With corporate training gamification you can:
-
Increase engagement and productivity
When employees actually enjoy the learning process, they’re more likely to invest time and effort into the process, and retain the information they gather. Gamification strategies are backed by science. The use of gaming elements within training helps to release neurotransmitters within the brain.
Dopamine is released when users are rewarded for specific actions. Serotonin gives employees a happy feeling when they accomplish something, like earning a new badge. Gamification can even release endorphins, keeping learners excited and interested. A little gamification can transform the engagement and productivity level of employees in any high-performance coaching strategy.
-
Encourage better collaboration
In many businesses, collaboration is the key to a successful team. Since corporate training gamification focuses on social elements, it’s an excellent way to strengthen bonds between staff members, help team members develop emotional intelligence, and boost empathy.
Gamification in education can even pave the way to social learning opportunities. Battles, competitions, and real-time challenges allow team members to share knowledge and insights with each other on a consistent basis. What’s more, because team members will have stronger bonds after the training session, they’ll be more likely to connect and collaborate outside of training too.
-
Foster creativity and innovation
Gamification in corporate training pushes employees to use their minds in different ways, and view problems from unique perspectives. In role-based training scenarios, companies can create simulations where employees can actually practice dealing with different situations. Learners can discover how to work together with their teams on solutions to problems and new strategies.
With creative campaigns, students can learn how to look at common problems from new perspectives, making it easier for them to come up with innovative new solutions to issues. Gamification in education nurtures the creative sides of your team members.
-
Improve business insights
Gamification in education can also be an excellent way for business leaders to learn more about the skills and weaknesses of their team members. Leaderboards and scoreboards provide a dynamic insight into a learner’s performance throughout the training experience.
This ensures companies can more rapidly adapt to the evolving needs of employee training, by paying attention to where their team members need the most help. Additionally, corporate training gamification can make it easier to pinpoint the potential leaders in your team who might be able to support, mentor, and guide other members of staff.
As mentioned above, gamified training has been proven to improve training outcomes in a variety of different ways. It can boost employee experiences and workplace productivity, enhance learning retention, and help staff members practice new skills more effectively.
What’s more, because businesses can track data from gamification in training and development, they can use these insights to create more customized educational strategies for each team member. Personalizing the training process to the needs of each individual employee ensures you’re more likely to hone their strengths and eradicate weaknesses.
-
Increase business agility
Gamification in training provides businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of shorter feedback cycles. You can spot engagement patterns and opportunities instantly, and use what you learn to adjust future training strategies. Monitoring progress indicators is a great way to determine which gamification strategies work best for your teams.
Additionally, businesses can use gamification for a wide range of different purposes, from training new leaders in succession strategies, to finding new ways to onboard staff members. As businesses evolve, implementing new sales and marketing strategies, they can implement gamification efforts to introduce team members to new ideas, software, and tools.
-
Improve employer branding
Employees appreciate engaging and powerful training opportunities. Studies show that 59% of employees say regular training improves their job performance, and 51% say it gives them more confidence. Implementing corporate training gamification into your workplace is an excellent way to not only retain existing employees, but make your business more appealing to new talent too.
In today’s age of skill shortages, adding gamification into training offers businesses an excellent way to differentiate themselves from other business leaders, and connect with the values of potential candidates. This could mean businesses end up with a wider range of talented team members to work with, just with a little training.
Using Gamification in Education
While corporate training gamification can deliver countless benefits to companies, it’s worth noting it’s not a magic tool for employee productivity. To ensure gamification in education delivers results, business leaders need to ensure they’re implementing the right strategies, using the right tools, and monitoring the correct metrics.
Working with a market-leading solution provider in employee training gamification is the best way to boost your chances of success. For instance, HSE offers access to a range of powerful gamified training events and experiences, specifically designed to suit the needs of sales professionals and other growing employees.
Visit HSE today to learn more about how you can quickly and easily implement the power of gamified training into your workplace.
