Employee training is integral to the growth and development of every organization. Regardless of the industry, employees want to keep their professional skills up to date. That is why it is important for businesses to pay special attention to corporate training. From increasing employee productivity and retention to improving employee engagement at work, training is what helps businesses keep their competitive edge.
So, how do you ensure that you provide the best training to your employees?
Thanks to the e-learning industry and the rise in learning management systems (LMS) solutions, it has become convenient and easy for companies to impart effective training to their employees. As covered in our December 2018 blog post – “The Science and Benefits of Gamification in Learning Management Systems” – gamification is one of the most effective methods of engaging your team members. It’s an immersive learning technique that effectively tackles such training needs as professional skills enhancement, induction and onboarding, soft skills improvement, behavioral change programs and compliance.
Why gamification is effective
Simply stated, gamification is the concept of applying game-design thought processes to non-game applications. It is an effective e-learning method for the following reasons:
- It captures the attention of the learners and helps them retain information long-term.
- It challenges the learners.
- It engages and entertains the learners.
- It is an effective way to teach.
There are complete and partial gamification programs that can be adopted to improve the learning experience. Asha Pandey – Chief Learning Strategist at EI Design – provides six uses of gamification in e-learning
It improves your induction and onboarding program – A mission-based learning program can be developed to facilitate induction and onboarding. Various levels are created, which need to be cleared within the stipulated time. Leaderboards are also created so that the learners can assess their progress against other team members.
It helps improve professional skills – Different learner paths are created for professional skill enhancement. Learning and gamification paths are aligned to suit the proficiency of the learners. A mix of questions can be created in each path, where learners get to learn from real-life situations that match the proficiency level of the learners.
It helps overcome compliance issues – Interactive and engrossing gamification programs can be created to help learners overcome compliance issues. Incremental learning is offered at all the stages of the game so that the learners can take up and meet the challenges. A representation of the actual work environment – or a generic simulated environment – is provided, along with a series of rewards to encourage correct responses.
It offers rewards and recognition – A series of gamified activities is used to reward the learners. The activities are used to train the qualities learners need to develop to win.
It helps improve soft skills and time management – As an example, El Design’s course module, “Identify the Time Wasters” leads participants to determine how much time they spend dealing with junk email.
It offers gamified assessment – The conclusion of the e-learning course itself is presented as a game to enhance student engagement.
Benefits of gamification in e-learning are well-established.
Gamification offers better learning experience – It is fun to learn through a game-based learning process. Gamification improves user engagement, which allows individuals to retain and easily recall the information they’ve learned
It offers a better learning environment – Gamification provides an effective and informal learning environment. It helps learners deal with real-life situations in a safe environment.
Gamification offers instant feedback – Gamification offers instant feedback, which helps learners to assess what they have learned and what they still need to learn.
It can bring about behavioral change – There is more to gamification than just points and badges. Gamification can bring about a significant behavioral change with the scientific principles of recurrent retrieval and spaced repetition.
It improves the overall performance of your learners – With higher recall and
retention, better learning experience, etc., it can improve the performance of your employees significantly.
Impact of gamification
Gamification can impact your bottom line significantly. For example, if you are in the sales vertical, gamification can help improve the performance of your team members substantially. Sales is a competitive vertical. And, it is not all that difficult to gamify your sales vertical. If you use gamification with your team members, you can motivate them, track, inspire, collaborate, reward and set new targets for them so that they excel in their field.
The idea behind gamification is not new. We all are aware of loyalty programs, reward cards, accumulating airline miles, etc., which keeps us coming back to certain brands. Using gamification in your company can boost a sense of teamwork and moving toward a common purpose. Gamification allows you to set goals, helps track performance and reward those who do well.
A gamified approach can help you improve your sales performance significantly. Here is how you can use gamification to incentivize and reward your team
With gamification, you can set your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) – You can conveniently set goals and KPIs for each of your team members every month. You can track weekly sales activities from the total number of calls made, appointments set and completed to new deals signed and closed for the month. It is also possible to track the number of open deals and the leads that get converted.
You can incentivize your team members – It is the desire of every salesperson to win the race and grab the trophy. That is the reason sales incentives work so well. If your sales reps buy into your incentive program and culture, it is bound to create a sense of loyalty for your team and company.
You can create a team incentive rewards program and contests – Rewards and contests work well for all of us, but it works especially well for people in the sales vertical. If you want your salespeople to work harder and exceed their targets, you need to create an effective incentive rewards program. Also, you can offer a contest with a quarterly prize for the team’s top performers. Further, you can offer a sales incentive trip or build a bonus structure for those who achieve or exceed their targets.
It is therefore important that you give due consideration to corporate training and incorporate gamification to get the best results. But when it comes to corporate training, you need to understand that there are certain hidden threats to your corporate training programs. To protect your corporate training programs, eServe can help secure your digital media. eServe also offers a learning content management system (LCMS), which is designed to complement your LMS. Contact us to learn more.
