How gamified learning engages employees
In simple terms, Gamification is the practise of placing the principles of gameplay into a traditionally non-game scenario; there are many famously effective examples of distinctly different businesses employing this approach.
Neuroscience and gamification
Why has gamification become so popular? Well, because this approach is great for increasing user engagement. Neuroscience can tell us why this is the case.
The feeling of drive we feel to complete a task is powered by dopamine (‘The happy hormone’), which is released whenever we experience something satisfying. Achievements like: beating your personal best score, unlocking further gameplay opportunities, or putting a particularly overconfident co-worker back in their place (damn you Bob!) can all be very satisfying. But the act of simply playing a game can also bring immediate pleasure. Dopamine neurons are programmed to predict when something satisfying could be on the way and get to work on making you happier as soon as the achievement is in sight.
Naturally, if something is actively providing a positive response in the brain of a user, they will be more motivated to engage with the content. Given that around 37 million people in the UK actively play video games, it seems clear that gamification has a role to play at work as well as at home.
Gamification in the workplace
We have already covered effective examples of gamification, what most of these examples have in common is that the end goal of the gameplay was to increase sales of a particular product or service.
I would like to draw focus to a different use case – gamified learning. In particular, how gamification can be utilised within the workplace to increase employee engagement, enjoyment while learning and overall productivity.
How does that happen?
- Competition
Games are inherently competitive: whether you’re competing against the computer, your own high score or another human being. Gamebrain quizzes from The Access Group provide a versus mode which drives users to compete against one another’s scores. Not only does this increase replay value – providing a greater opportunity for knowledge to sink in – but also the opportunity for increased person-to-person engagement through friendly competitions. This is particularly useful in times of isolation.
- Happiness
Going back to the neuroscience angle, it’s clear that gameplay is strongly correlated with an increase in fun and happiness. Now, with many organisations impacted by Covid-19 increasing their focus on learning, with employees in fact spending 130% more time developing their knowledge and skills, it’s increasingly key that happiness can be found in the learning process. And research shows us that happiness at work has a direct effect on productivity.
- Employee-led learning
This means a focus on the skills your employees know that they need right now, not the ones you as an employer believe they will need in the future. In a modern, agile work environment, it’s impossible to understand every challenge that every employee will face day-to-day. Therefore, you can never predict all the training needs and provide prescribed content to match. This is where relying on the people with the most knowledge, the ones already in role, can be vital.
Gamebrain empowers organisations to create and rapidly deploy their own quizzes on whatever subject they deem suitable. This, combined with the ‘pick-up-and-play’ nature of the app, means users can gain the knowledge they need for any given task; at the exact moment they need it.
The Access learning library includes 1000+ courses, with topics ranging from; highly-specialist governance, risk and compliance, health and safety, cyber awareness, legal compliance and professional development (as well as the capacity to produce custom eLearning content). Many of our courses can be accessed online and through a variety of devices.
