Employee training is one of the most important endeavors that any company can invest in.
In a skills-short environment, the right training initiatives can instantly appeal to a wider range of talented professionals. Around 76% of staff members say they’re more likely to work with employers that offer additional training designed to expand people’s skills.
What’s more, the right investment in employee training helps to boost engagement levels in the workplace, and ensure team members have the right selection of skills in a changing world. Training helps teams to boost output and avoid risks, whether your organization needs the ability to work better with data, to prevent costly cyber attacks, to adopt new digital workflow processes or to enter new markets.
Of course, for training to deliver the right results, it needs to be delivered correctly. Boring seminars and old-fashioned documents rarely have the lasting impact companies are looking for. Gamified micro-lessons are quickly emerging as an excellent alternative. In fact, the corporate sector is currently the largest adopter of game-based learning, with a massive 47.5% growth rate.
Let’s explore the impact that gamification can have on different types of employee training.
What Is Gamified Employee Training?
Gamification in employee training is essentially the process of adding game-like elements, like competition, leaderboards and rewards, to the learning experience.
Employees might earn points and badges for their accomplishments. With gamification, the focus is on “leveling up” an employee’s skill, using various tactics to increase their investment in the educational process. Rather than just reading manuals or completing quizzes, staff members get to engage in tasks which demonstrate retained knowledge to unlock specific rewards.
As companies continue to invest more in upskilling and re-skilling their employees, the concept of gamification has grown more popular. Today’s business leaders can gamify virtually anything, from teaching sales techniques, to improving business collaboration.
Here are three key areas of business learning where gamification has shown the best impact.
1. Onboarding and Initial Training
Onboarding a new hire comes with a significant amount of training and education. Team members may need to learn how to use new tools, how to follow certain processes, and even what techniques to use when working with others. Unfortunately, when team members have an ineffective onboarding experience, they’re all the more likely to search for another job.
Gamification is an excellent way to get employees engaged and excited when they’re entering a business for the first time. If they can see the workplace as fun and interesting, they’re more likely to be invested in working there for longer. In fact, 78% of people say a gamified process during recruitment and onboarding makes them more excited to work for the company.
Gamification in the onboarding journey can also be an excellent way to ensure employees hold onto the key information they need to be successful in their role. While learners tend to only recall around 10% of what they read, and 20% of what they hear, they remember up to 90% of an interactive, and gamified task.
2. Compliance and Security Training
Compliance and security training is crucial to any business in today’s world of ever-changing threats. With issues like phishing and social attacks becoming more common in the digital landscape, virtually every business needs to update its training strategy.
Unfortunately, according to surveys, most people describe compliance and security training as “boring,” and around 34% of employees admit to only “skimming through” educational content. Gamification helps to convert compliance and security training initiatives from a tedious and difficult experience, into a fun and engaging opportunity.
For instance, gamification in cyber security can help companies to make their employees aware of the most common threats they face, and how to mitigate them, without the risk of losing staff interest. With a competitive leaderboard and a fun rewards system, teams are encouraged to advance their security skills, successfully identify threats to earn points, and outdo each other for a higher score.
Not only does this boost engagement, but it also helps to make security and compliance a more integral part of the company culture.
3. Soft Skill Training
While it’s important to keep employees up-to-date with the latest procedural and technical skills, companies shouldn’t overlook the importance of soft skills as well. Talents in things like leadership, communication, collaboration, and organization can all significantly improve the efficiency and productivity of a team member in any industry.
Experts believe that one of the biggest determining factors that lead to job success is a person’s soft skills. The challenge is getting people engaged in the learning experience. With gamification, you can creatively engage employees in the experience of developing their skills, through hands-on and value-focused experiences.
Since gamifying their leadership academy, Deloitte has seen a 47% increase in the number of users returning to the course each week. Gamification can be used to enhance all kinds of soft skill training, whether you’re teaching teams how to be more productive, or giving them guidance on how to complete work more efficiently.
The Power of Gamification in Training
Gamification is quickly becoming the most exciting opportunity for the training landscape.
The concept isn’t just about making training more fun; it actually has a direct impact on the quality of the learning experience. Studies show that gamification can lead to 14% higher scores on skills-based tests, and 11% higher scores on knowledge tests. What’s more, 85% of employees display greater engagement when gamification solutions are implemented into their workplace training programs.
By gamifying the right training experiences, companies can ensure they’re really getting the most out of their learning programs.
