Gamification in Training: A Guide to Engaging Corporate Learning

Gamification in training can boost the effectiveness and engagement of your corporate learning programs. 

But gamifying your training programs does more than draw in disengaged employees. It helps you:

• Achieve your training goals successfully.
• Build a team spirit.
• Strengthen your company culture.
• And a lot more. 

Learn how to make the most of gamified training and where to apply it.

💪 What is gamification in training?

Gamification in training means using game-like elements, mechanics, and principles in a training context.

The target of any training program should be to create a fun, engaging, and rewarding learning experience. Training and development gamification helps you achieve it.

Incentives like rewards, badges, and points provide the employee with an external motivation to engage with the content while still digesting the teachings. Plus, the immediate recognition makes employees motivated to achieve more in training.

How do you gamify your training?

You can gamify your training programs by including game mechanics in your lessons.

Game mechanics are control mechanisms and processes that rule and guide the player's actions and the game's feedback on those actions. 

A few examples: 

• 🔝 Leaderboards. They show employees how they compare to others, individually or as a team. Leaderboards promote friendly competition. A competitive environment motivates employees to put more effort into specific tasks.
• ‍🏅Badges. These are issued when the employee accomplishes a task. They can appear under an employee's username on the leaderboard. They boost the employee's confidence and provide an extrinsic motivation that pushes them to keep giving their best.
• 💯 Points. Employees earn points for completing activities or contributing as they advance through the training. The points are displays of accomplishments that are measurable. You can have rewards for employees who attain a certain sum of points, such as premier parking or a bonus.
• 🪜 Levels. Levels indicate when an employee has hit a milestone. They show that the employee can access extra learning material and is capable of achieving a more advanced set of objectives. It gives them a sense of advancement and intrinsic motivation to keep learning. Levels also make it easier to organize the employee's content progression better.
• 📊  Progress bars. They show the part of the course the employee has completed and how much more they need to tackle. Progress bars boost training completion rates. Add a touch of animation to make them visually pleasing and fun.
• 🔎  Goal-oriented challenges: Once the employees begin to get comfortable and feel they've covered all there is to learn, challenges test their knowledge and get them engaged again.
• 🔄 Rapid feedback: Instant feedback is an immediate response to the trainee's action. For instance, when they pick an answer to a challenge, the training system can tell them if they're right and give or deduct points.
• 👥 Collaboration tasks: Employees can work cooperatively to solve problems or perform other tasks in pairs or groups. Each learner brings unique skills and ideas to the table. Collaborating expands the understanding and knowledge of the pair or group.

Gamification pitfalls you should avoid

Gamification can boost the training experience for your employees. But it requires strategic planning to avoid incentivizing wrong behaviors or encouraging too much competition.

Tip: You don't want to shift your employees' attention from a proven effective onboarding learning experience or professional development to earning points, leading the leaderboard, and getting badges.

If you add game mechanics to your training without consideration for your employees' needs, they could see the approach as manipulative. And this could make it hard to achieve your training objectives.

🏆 What are the benefits of gamification in corporate training?

Gamification tactics for training can help you achieve both training and business objectives.

Gamification accelerates the learning process

When employees feel rewarded and appreciated for their efforts, they are eager to keep learning, which is one of the major benefits of gamification in training.

Meeting the goals set creates feelings of satisfaction with the training. Plus, it builds an intrinsic motivation to keep learning.

Your employees will also retain the information better than in traditional non-gaming environments. An engaged learner retains more information than one going passively through the motions.

Tip: Some employees may want to focus on the learning materials only. Make it possible to turn off the gamification features.

Gamification builds social connections

Competitions and challenges used as gamification techniques encourage employees to compete against each other in a friendly way. It helps them bond, and each employee feels part of a team.

Collaborative tasks encourage peer feedback and create a knowledge-sharing environment. Bringing like-minded employees together to pursue a shared goal fuels the community spirit.

These social connections encourage learning beyond the coursework. It creates a learning culture where improvement is at the heart of how employees interact with each other.

Gamified learning leads to an increase in engagement levels

Engaging learners is essential for a training programme to be effective. 

Gamification elements such as Zavvy's use of reminders in the training journey and celebration of milestones make the learner attached to the training outcome.

In addition, winning and getting progress acknowledgements when learning creates a dopamine rush. These are happy hormones studies have related to rewards and pleasure. The employee feels incentivized to keep taking the specific action, which leads to the rush of happy hormones.

Here's how that works:

The employee performs an action, which prompts a reward for performing the action.  → The reward triggers feel-good hormones. → The employee has a chance to perform the action again in another lesson. →  The employee eagerly performs the action in hope of getting the same happy feelings.→ This cycle creates sustained employee engagement.

Gamification also makes it easier to assess if the virtual training is engaging. You can get a fast glimpse of training engagement by looking at learner progression through rewards earned and tracking their movement on the leaderboard.

Tip: Allow the employees to choose their pace of learning by making some content available only after specific learning outcomes occur, such as completing a task with a passing score. Add a fun dimension by awarding points based on accuracy and speed of completing the task.

Gamification in training makes tedious tasks a more fun experience

Tedious and routine training can be dry and boring. And traditional forms of training do not do much to make these training sessions more enjoyable for employees.

Gamified approaches to tedious tasks add fun to the sessions. They motivate the learners.

Tip: Remember to make things unpredictable. If employees know how many points they'll get for an answer or which badge they'll get, things can quickly get stale. Instead, include random rewards and varying points depending on the intensity of a challenge.

Gamification supports a strong company culture

Company culture matters to people. Gamification helps build a culture of learning. It creates a culture promoting employee growth and development through fun and engaging training.

It can make your employees inclined to stay and grow with the company.

Gamification enhances the training experience

Gamification in learning creates an interactive experience. It's different from traditional forms of training where the employee attends a dull lecture-style training session.

An interactive training experience is essential for virtual learning.

Instead of simply sitting in front of the computer, game mechanics like challenges and collaborative problem-solving tasks force learners to apply the knowledge from the learning materials.

For example, using challenges helps employees familiarize themselves with real problems they could face in the workplace.

Thus, gamification helps your employees retain more information and use the new skills in their roles. It also enhances their innovation and creativity.

Levels make the learning experiences more personalized. It makes your employees more likely to recall the training.

But you cannot take training effectiveness for granted. Gamification elements like ongoing knowledge checks help employees to continuously improve their skills throughout the training sessions, unlike traditional training programs, where trainees get their scores at the end of the training program.

💡 How to implement gamification in training in your organization?

Apart from onboarding new employees, gamifying training can be effective in almost all departments of an organization and for diverse corporate needs.

Gamification in leadership training

Using gamification in management training provides opportunities to develop your employees’ leadership skills in a more realistic training environment.

You can simulate decision-making scenarios leading to diverse outcomes. It prepares new leaders to tackle different situations in their roles.

Tip: Create situations where the managers can see how any choice they make in the game leads to consequences or rewards. It can push them to be more aware of their options.

Remember that according to the 70-20-10 rule, coursework and training have a limited contribution (10%) to a leader's growth. About 20% comes from developmental relationships, and 70% comes from challenging experiences.

Gamification in sales training

Use gamification in training to increase your team's efficiency in selling.

It's especially essential if you're constantly rolling out new products or software and the teams need to master the features and offerings.

For example, you can simulate a customer, and the team members can try to sell the new products to the imaginary customer.

Tip: Create a contest with a public leaderboard. Team members can move up the leaderboard as they close sales through accurate descriptions of the new products.

Gamification in training employees on new software

New software can improve your company's workflow. But getting people to leave the old and become familiar with the latest software can be a challenge.

Use gamification in training your employees on the new software and get them to practice what they learn.

One way you can gamify tools or software training is by setting challenging goals for the employees to learn new features of the software. Once an employee understands a feature, give them a badge or any form of recognition for the achievement.

Gamification in compliance training

Employee compliance training is not an enjoyable experience for most employees. But ensuring your employees internalize all the policies prevents consequences of non-compliance, such as:

• penalties,
• reputation damage,
• loss of business.

With gamification you can deliver compliance training in a more fun and engaging way.

Tip: include clues in your training material that the employees will need for completing challenges. Each challenge can represent a topic covered in the compliance training. Points should be accumulated for each challenge, and the employee with the highest points will be awarded a badge.

Gamification in cybersecurity training

A significant advantage of gamification in cybersecurity training is that it facilitates behavior change. It can encourage the development of habits like:

• Checking links before clicking on them.
• Always double-checking the sender of emails they receive.
• Auditing suspicious requests for sensitive information before responding.

When the employee gets feedback in the form of points, it makes them more engaged in the training and encourages them to internalize the concepts.

A great example would be to produce an email where the employees have to identify elements of the email that show it is fraudulent or a phishing attempt.

The employees can earn points for every correct identification. The points will contribute to their position on a leaderboard.

Such a game can make them more sensitive to phishing emails in a real-life work environment.

Other ways to gamify your company training are in areas like:

• soft skills development,
• quality assurance,
• workplace etiquette,
• customer handling.

❗️ Gamification in training: Dos & don'ts

Proper implementation of gamification in training can improve employee experiences and satisfaction, plug the skills gap in your company, and strengthen positive learning patterns.

🟢 Do's

Align gamification efforts with your business and learning objectives

Establish the goals of the training first and what the employee will gain from the training. Ensure these goals align with the broader business goals.

Once these objectives are clear, create your gamification strategy. Choose gaming mechanics that align with your training goals.

Personalize the training experience

Gamification in training on its own will not help create a meaningful experience for your employees. You have to personalize it.

Add a personal feel to the training by:

• Using the employee's name throughout the training.
• Making it possible for employees to choose an avatar that represents their personality.
• Allowing the employees to customize the elements of the training, such as design themes and closed captioning. This is especially helpful in virtual training.
• Using branching scenarios to allow employees to choose their learning path. Through branching scenarios an employee is required to make a decision that presents consequences. Each consequence leads to more choices and challenges, causing the lessons to unfold in unpredictable ways.

Personalization improves the effectiveness of gamification. It makes employees feel more engaged and connected to the training.

Use gamification with your existing training programs

Using gamification in training doesn't have to involve re-inventing a new corporate training program. 

Look at your existing training materials. Then find opportunities to insert gamification elements.  

Ensure your training supports socialization

A major benefit of gamification in training is that it allows employees to interact and collaborate as they learn.

Encourage interactions by adding ice-breaking activities. Form pairs, groups, and teams early in the training session. It'll encourage the employees to form relationships early enough.

You can also integrate social media functions into the training. It allows your employees to share their achievements with their friends and family and encourages social media collaboration.

🛑 Don'ts

Assume all gamification efforts are equal

Not all game elements will appeal to the different personalities of your employees. Mix it up.

Use leaderboards, badges, points, and a variety of gamification techniques to cater to the different tastes of your employees.

Ignore the nature of the topic

Game mechanics like public leaderboards that put employees in healthy competition against each other may be inappropriate when dealing with sensitive subject matters like sexual harassment. 

Make gamification an end goal

The end goal of your training should be to increase training efficiency and improve the employees' experience and satisfaction. And gamification in training is a method for achieving these goals.

Ask yourself, is the gamification strategy helping your employees remember what's being communicated and achieve the goal of your training, or are they only having fun? Or even worse, are they even having fun at all?

Use complicated game mechanics

Challenging game mechanics can make learning more engaging and encourage the employee to master the training. But a difficulty level that's too high can cause frustration. It can drive employee engagement to drop.

Avoid going overboard with gaming elements. Create a gamification strategy that fits the learning level of your employees.

Use gamification to fix ineffective training programs

Gamification in training addresses learner disengagement. A gamification strategy cannot fix a faulty training program or underlying problems in your management system or processes.

🔍 How to combine gamification with other forms of training

How can gamification be used effectively in corporate training?

Gamification & scenario-based learning

Using realistic scenarios in corporate training is a powerful learning method. It puts the employees in challenging real-life situations that help them practice their skills. It's especially effective in leadership training.

Simulate decision-sensitive situations that leaders often face and are hard to replicate in real life. Use these situations to help them learn the impact of their choices.

Tip: Add gamification mechanics to the training by timing the decisions. Each decision made can mean a point for the employee. As they earn more points, more levels can unlock more demanding decisions.

Gamification & microlearning

For dull and lengthy content, gamification is not enough to ensure employees understand and retain the information. Combine it with microlearning.

Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, created 'The Forgetting Curve'. It indicates a decline in memory retention over time. When no attempt is made to retain the information, most of it is lost immediately after learning.

Prevent a rapid loss of information by breaking complex topics into bite-sized lessons. Your employees will digest information more effortlessly and will improve knowledge retention. Add gamification mechanics for a boost of engagement.

You can create short, focused tasks for each micro-learning topic with points associated with each one of them. A dashboard can showcase the employees' progress and performance through the training session.

Consider adding quizzes throughout the lessons to refresh the memory of your trainees and keep them engaged.

➡️ Check out how Roadsurfer incorporates quizzes to enhance the learning experience of new Customer Success specialists.

Gamification & on-the-job training

On-the-job training is essential in helping employees familiarize themselves with the working environment they'll become a part of. Plus, training is an essential component of employee enablement.

Successful gamification mixed with on-the-job training can stir excitement and build retention as you enable your employees to develop the skills and competencies they need to succeed in their role.

Gamification with instructor-led training

Training employees in a virtual classroom is still a trend in workplace learning and development. And you can add game mechanics to the training.

For instance, create a highly immersive VR-based working environment. You can personalize this environment to match the unique roles and responsibilities of each employee and the setting of each department.

Give the employees points for every task completed and deduct points in cases of poor performance.

🏢 3 Examples of companies using gamification for training effectively

Here are three gamification training examples where the companies achieved their training goals.

AstraZeneca turned to gamification to train their sales staff on a project involving a new range of medicines.

They built a training program known as 'Go-to-Jupiter'.

The game involved game mechanics like rewards, leaderboards, team competitions, and levels to get the sales staff excited about the new product launch. They were also able to check the results of the training in real-time.

The gamification efforts resulted in over 95% participants completing the training module. And engagement rates were at 97%. The employees also spent time outside regular working hours to complete the program, indicating high motivation to learn.

Deloitte uses gamification in its leadership training. It involves video lectures, tests, and quizzes used alongside missions, badges, and leaderboards to boost retention of their in-depth leadership training courses.    

Deloitte has implemented a personalization feature for the learning platform. Learners were able to customize the website to suit their unique learning priorities. They could also connect it to their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.

For every learning program completed, the participant received a badge. There are multiple surprise rewards that are unlocked after achieving some predefined goals.

Their leaderboard resets after seven days to give newcomers a fair chance at topping the charts.

Deloitte previously had a challenge encouraging its leadership to start and complete the training program. But with gamification, they achieved a 47% increase in return users.

PwC used gamification in their recruitment process.

In a game called Multipoly, job candidates would be subjected to a virtual simulation of being an employee in the company. The simulation involved negotiating with mock clients and trying out different roles in the company.

Before playing the game, candidates would spend less than 10 minutes on PwC's career page. The successful implementation of gamification elements led to candidates spending as much as 90 minutes on the page.

The game mechanics helped their job candidate pool grow by 190% and increased interest in working for PwC by 78%.

Candidates who worked at PwC after playing the game could also easily integrate in the company and had a better grasp of the company's culture.

➡️ Ensure more rewarding training experiences and accelerate learning

Providing rewarding and engaging training experiences should always be a target of your training initiatives.

Yet, gamification on its own is not enough.

Without strategic planning, gamification might incentivize wrong behaviours and create more harm than good.
Be sure to use gamification elements that fit your training programs. Always keep your training objectives at the forefront and select mechanics that'll be most effective in achieving them.

With the right training strategy and Zavvy, you can create highly rewarding training experiences for your employees and accelerate learning. Take the first step by booking a free demo.