7 Benefits of Using Gamification in Corporate Training

 

Gamification is the art of engaging and motivating the audience to achieve a desired goal. It is often misunderstood as “Adding games in an already existing process”. Now that we are on the same page and understand what gamification is, let us dive deeper into where it could be applied and what are its benefits.

Some of the most common applications of gamification are in education, corporate training, management training and development and customer engagement. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that learning with gamification is considered to have better results than the traditional practices.

In this article, we are going to focus on how corporates can benefit by introducing gamification in training their employees.

1. Reduced training time and cost

The cost for training employees is extremely high given the fact that the human resources that are required to train the employees must be extremely proficient at what they do. Moreover, because the training process is standard for all types of people, it ends up taking more time than it actually should.

One of our customers, a Fortune 500 company, managed to save as much as 80% in cost and reduced the training time by as much as 25% by introducing gamification in their training process of new recruits.

2. Higher employee engagement

While the training period is supposed to be fun, it ends up being boring after a certain period of time. This is mainly because too much information is bombarded on the trainees in a very short period of time.

It is important to keep all trainees engaged at all times to ensure that they grasp every important bit of information that is passed on to them. Learning with gamification is the only way an employee can be kept engaged throughout the training process.

3. Increased retention of knowledge

A gamification based learning process allows the user to learn, practice and then test her skills in ways more than one. This improves retention of user knowledge and educates the users of various scenarios where the knowledge could be used.

Some of our customers have granted us access to data which leads us to believe that an employee who has completed her training with our gamified solution is more obedient to guidelines and standards that were taught to them during the training.

4. Realtime performance evaluation

Unlike traditional training processes where employees must tend to a test at the end of the training, gamified learning experiences enabled by technology allow the management to track a trainee’s performance in real time. Learning management systems linked with the gamification modules are able to track and automatically evaluate the performance of each employee and provide in depth analysis of their performance.

This helps the management with better decision making when retaining and assigning employees to various projects / departments.

5. Personalised learning

The foremost benefit of gamification is its ability to understand a learner’s strengths and weaknesses and assign specific tasks that ensure a holistic educational experience. This approach will not only contribute to all other factors listed in this article, but also deliver better learning outcomes by serving the necessary learning material catering to each individual’s personal abilities.

6. Ease of access to learning material

How do corporates conduct training? In training rooms, with field visits, on conference calls these days? So, how does one get access to the training material once they are off the job? One might say, that there is plenty of documentation that we have maintained and shared with the trainees for them to be able to read it anywhere and at anytime. But tell me something.. how many of your trainees are going to sincerely access and read through all those documents?

We had provided one of our customers with a mobile app for their employees to be able to access the various interactive learning activities at any time on their smartphones. It was observed that the number of employees accessing this material post their training was 500% more than the number of employees that are given documentation to read.

7. Helps with change management

It is a well known fact that most employees outperform themselves if they are put in a constantly evolving environment. However, change management is risky business and no corporate would encourage it unless it was really necessary. Gamification has the potential to change that outlook.

Imagine an open to all gamified learning ecosystem that is accessible to all your employees. With this, it will be possible for all employees to learn in depth about how the other related departments or roles function. This will also enable the employees to build a career path for themselves based on their interests and likings.

Conclusion

Gamification has become an important way of training and development across all industries. It not only helps reduce the costs involved in training, but also delivers better learning outcomes. Moreover, it helps build a stronger and more versatile structure from the bottom up for any corporate that is looking to expand rapidly.