Gamebrain
How to use gamification to improve employee engagement
Struggling to keep employees engaged in training? Incorporating gamification into your corporate learning could well be your secret weapon.
Through elements like bite-sized gameplay, friendly competition, and rewards, organisations are finding new ways to deliver essential knowledge while making learning fun.
Let’s explore what gamified learning is and why it should be a key part of your learning strategy.
What is gamification in employee training?
Gamification is the practice of placing the principles of gameplay into a traditionally non-game scenario. It can be utilised within the workplace to increase employee engagement, provide something exciting to participate in and ultimately have a positive impact on productivity. Depending on the purpose of the content, it can be available as an integrated part of an LMS system or a standalone app.
Offering gamification to improve employee engagement means information is more likely to stick due to the repetitive nature of the gameplay and the more casual, fun elements involved that don’t mean sitting through a corporate presentation. By incorporating gamification in your L&D strategy, you can create fun learning experiences while sharing key knowledge.
Using gamification for employee engagement
Although gamification in employee training turns organisational content into a game – it by no means devalues or discredits the information being shared.
There are various ways to use gamification to improve employee engagement within a work environment to offer support to learners. It depends on the requirements set out by the company as to the purpose of the gamification but a few include:
- employee training to upskill or reskill employees
- feeding important company information to new hires who are going through the onboarding process
- sharing company values and updates.
Gamification benefits for employees
Adding game-like features such as point scoring, problem-solving and rewards around important topics is a great way for employees to take in vital information.
Below are five ways gamification can increase employee engagement and support workplace learning.
1. Boosts engagement with content
Gamification in learning boosts engagement by turning training into an interactive, exciting and enjoyable experience. This approach, paired with the competitive element, allows better information retention as learners actively participate and interact with the content.
2. The feeling of achievement
The feeling of achievement is directly linked to the release of dopamine, also known as the happy chemical. It’s no wonder that dopamine is released when the feeling that comes with winning or doing well at something is satisfying.
This positive feeling will encourage engagement with the learning and specific content, such as understanding the company values. And when your employees are seeing progress – they’ll feel good about it!
3. Accessible and mobile friendly
Having an accessible model which encourages ‘pick up and play’ means users can gain the knowledge they need for any given task; at the exact moment they need it. Designed for mobile, our gamified learning app fits seamlessly into everyday life. With people constantly connected to their phones, it offers a simple, engaging way to turn downtime into learning time, often without users even realising it. Your employees can learn anytime, anywhere, in a way that suits their schedule and preference.
4. Short sessions of learning
Absorbing facts and details through smaller, bitesize chunks is a proven way to digest information effectively. With the Access gamified learning solution, a complete game can last only two minutes.
This makes it far easier for gamers to start a challenge without needing to sacrifice a big chunk of their day. This also makes it likelier for an employee to open the game more frequently as they can fit a short game into a pocket of free time.
5. Creating a personalised experience
Personalised avatars place the learner at the heart of the game – and competing against colleagues’ avatars makes you forget you may be working in isolation.
Users can customise their avatars with branded clothing so that they’re amongst a tribe of people working towards the same objective.
It also offers players a more tailored experience and will likely lead to them picking up and playing the game more often, without feeling like they have to.
Find out how Gamebrain, our gamified learning solution, can boost engagement and knowledge retention in your business
How gamification in learning and development impacts your organisation
With gamified learning encouraging a better experience, increased engagement with training material and increased recall of information, many benefits for employees also have a strong positive impact for the organisation.
1. A workforce that is happier to learn
When faced with interactive quizzes and incentivised competition based learning, employees are more productive, leading to them engaging further with the content they are presented with.
This will likely encourage them to seek out and participate in additional training materials, knowing that they will find enjoyment within it.
2. Learning targets are met
Whist gamified learning offers a fun experience, it is important to remember that the specific information embedded within the content is essential for employees to learn.
This could be for company culture and onboarding, updates for sales representatives or refreshing safety procedures.
Providing the essential information in a fun and interactive way will ensure that the tasks not only get completed, but that they are done so with enthusiasm. In turn, training targets are more likely to consistently be met on time.
3. Enhances teamwork and connection
Gamification encourages engagement with colleagues, which can build strong and positive working relationships in a natural way. With many people working from home or remotely, it is essential that colleagues can discuss work topics but also have fun together and build a social connection.
4. A knowledgeable workforce
This leads us to what must be the ultimate organisational focus – a workforce made up of people with the knowledge, skills and commitment to consistently perform their roles to the highest level.
Giving them the tools they need to be able to work at peak performance ensures they can both do their job well and strive to learn more.
Gamification of learning, when used properly, can produce a wealth of benefits for both your learners and your organisation. This approach to learning should allow for the creation of meaningful content, rather than introduced just to make training and development more engaging for the sake of it. Gamified learning gives targets, and these targets give purpose.
Create engaging learning experiences with Access Gamebrain
Our suite of Digital Learning Solutions provides a range of fun and interactive solutions that help boost employee engagement.
This includes Gamebrain, our gamified learning platform - Gamebrain empowers organisations to create and rapidly deploy their own quizzes on a wide variety of topics.
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.
