One of your accountants has just secured a top spot in the monthly ranking, beating her colleagues by a hair’s breadth. A sales manager focuses on growing his virtual collection of achievement trophies. In the meantime, newly hired trainees jointly work through increasingly difficult stages to face the final challenge.
Now, what if we told you that all this takes place during the usual, nine-to-five day in the office (or home office) — and that it’s beneficial for your business?
That’s because all these activities are examples of gamification, a trend in educational software development that’s already common in online courses and language apps. More recently, it’s started to penetrate corporate education, too.
Below, you can find out why game mechanisms work so well and how you can implement them in your corporate training programs. Game on!
How gamification works
It’s easy to see why gamified education is so effective — it turns tedious learning into fun. Engaging game mechanics help trainees focus and enter a flow state while learning, but they can also change their mindset and approach towards acquiring new skills for their jobs. But there’s more to gamification than just learning through play. To build a game-based training program, you need to understand where learners’ motivation comes from.
Gamification evangelist Yu-Kai Chou has laid the groundwork for numerous education programs with his Octalysis framework. In it, Chou has defined eight core drives that incentivize us the most:
- Epic meaning and calling — A sense of mission that must be accomplished for the greater good. The players believe that achieving a task depends on them and benefits a broader community.
- Development and accomplishment — This drive refers to players’ ambition to improve their skills and progress towards achieving some goal or tackling an obstacle. The aim must be challenging to attain to feel relevant and rewarding.
- Empowerment of creativity and feedback — Humans are naturally driven by creative endeavors and express themselves by making new things. Seeing the results of these attempts and responding to them is equally crucial.
- Ownership and possession — The motivation to own things is a common and powerful one. That’s why so many people pursue wealth and collect goods, both material and virtual. It’s also the reason why customization and beautification can be so enticing.
- Social influence and relatedness — Being herd animals, we’re motivated by a range of social relations and emotions: we all want to be accepted and liked, we take care of and help each other. On the other hand, healthy rivalry can also be extremely incentivizing.
- Scarcity and impatience — FOMO (fear of missing out) truly exists, and it’s a powerful motivator in corporate education. When something is (or appears to be) exclusive or not easily available, we often feel the subliminal urge — and motivation — to obtain it.
- Unpredictability and curiosity — We often undertake activities to find out what will happen next. Also, we enjoy being surprised by the positive results of our actions.
- Loss and avoidance — Similarly, we don’t like being surprised by the negative outcomes, and we’re determined to avoid them at all costs.
Gamify your training program
Corporate gamification is effective as it allows instructional designers to craft the study process so that it appeals to these basic drives. To that end, various mechanics can be used. Let’s review the top five of them.
Leaderboards and scores
A gamification staple, leaderboards are a simple way to promote friendly competition. Rankings provide instant feedback and a visual representation of learners’ results. They also make it easy to track one’s progress in relation to other participants.
However, the tricky thing about leaderboards is their verticality — scoring low can be seriously discouraging, especially if the gap between low and high ranks seems impassable.
One solution is opting for several smaller leaderboards (e.g., for each department) instead of a single, company-wide one. Rate multiple factors and tasks to allow all team members to shine and periodically reset scores to enable new learners and old-timers to compete equally.
Rewards
A prospect of being rewarded can incentivize employees to put an extra effort into improving their skills. But remember that not all rewards will have the same effect. For example, physical prizes don’t work too well because they don’t appeal to any core drives other than ownership.
Ideally, you want to offer rewards aligned with your business and based on social recognition and a sense of achievement. It can be a badge, a LinkedIn recommendation, or an invitation to an exclusive corporate meeting.
Cooperation
Even though gamification is often associated with rivalry, it’s perfectly suited for stimulating collaboration. Cooperative tasks make individual learners responsible for the success of the entire team. Acknowledgment and helping others are both strong drives, too.
A game-based course can present participants with a seemingly impossible challenge. Everyone will need to contribute their unique skillsets to succeed. Alternatively, learners can obtain extra points for working together. The underlying purpose is to emphasize the fact that every task becomes easier when you communicate and collaborate.
Stages and levels
By dividing your course into a series of consecutive levels, you create a sense of progression, making learners feel that they’re getting better. To reinforce this feeling, incorporate storytelling elements into the process, for instance, by comparing acquiring a skill to a journey or adventure.
Another important feature of a stage-centered course structure is setting the learning pathway. To advance to the next level, participants must prove that they’re proficient in certain skills adequate for the current stage. This way, they can easily gauge their performance, while you can objectively assess their knowledge.
Real-life scenarios
Many games are designed to emulate real-life activities — think flight simulators or economy management games. By applying the same approach to corporate training development, you can prepare employees for situations they’ll encounter in their profession.
Engaging corporate learners in authentic scenarios has several significant advantages. First, participants are free to make mistakes and learn from them. Second, repetition will help them memorize standard procedures and learn how to respond to emergencies. Finally, more advanced simulation models enable testing for multiple outcomes and varying circumstances in an error-proof environment.
Gamification proves how a thoughtful approach to fundamental human drives can translate into practical solutions that stimulate learning. Adopting this approach is the next step in corporate education, where training is fun, engaging, and beneficial for employees and your business.
