Imagine a world where your Candy Crush points can help you get a promotion. What a weird world that must be. Now replace the word “Candy Crush” with a boring corporate skill.
Welcome to the future of corporate upskilling! It is fun and thrilling at the same time. With the help of gamification, learning any boring skill is like playing a game.
So, what is gamification in training?
If you are also getting curious, keep reading as we explore corporate gamification– the science behind it, its benefits, challenges, and more.
What Is Corporate Gamification?
Gamification is the process of adding game-like elements to any boring task and making it more interactive. In the case of gamified training, the management can set incentives, challenges, and leaderboards to encourage employees to upskill.
In a world where AI rules every industry, and technology advancement happens as fast as the speed of light, upskilling has become a necessity.
As per VC Kai-Fu Lee, AI will displace 50% of jobs by 2027.
Gamification is the ideal solution for tech-oriented companies who do not want to replace their employees but want them to evolve with technology.
Moreover, tech companies with remote staff can benefit from corporate gamification. With the help of online training with game-like elements, they can ensure that every employee gets to learn new skills. Employees can log in anytime with the help of an internet connection, pick the skill they want to learn, clear a level, gain points, share their accomplishments with friends, and get promoted.
So, what is the psychology behind gamification?
Let us explore this together.
The Science Behind Corporate Gamification
The psychology behind corporate gaming is pegged on two important principles: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Classical Conditioning.
Both these principles mainly target instant gratification for motivation. The employee stays hooked, providing them with a sense of accomplishment when they achieve a high score.
Not only that, there are a lot of other elements that make gamification enjoyable. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Dopamine Kick
Dopamine, also known as the pleasure hormone, is released when the person feels accomplished after achieving a goal or earning a reward. Every time the employee learns something and earns a score, dopamine kicks in and the person feels good.
Instant Gratification
Usually, the feedback system in a company is an annual process, which is painfully slow and the individual loses interest. With immediate feedback within a few minutes, the learner gets an opportunity to learn from mistakes and feel satisfied after hitting a mark.
Achievement Unlocks
With gamification, corporate training has short-term goals. So, after accomplishing one goal, the learner feels motivated to achieve the next one. This keeps the employee motivated, which eventually helps keep the spirits high.
Social Validation
Group training with gaming offers an opportunity to collaborate and compete with the team without being present in the same department or location. Moreover, the learner gets to flaunt their skills and get validation from others.
Having explored the core principles of gamification, you might be wondering why traditional methods seem to lack the same engagement.
Let’s delve deeper.
Why Doesn’t Traditional Corporate Training Work?
Traditional corporate training relies on old learning techniques like lectures, tutorials, and lengthy fit-all class sessions. Since the process takes a long time, most participants lose interest.
Moreover, the feedback is delayed, leaving room for ambiguity. The learner feels less in control and more frustrated by the end of the training.
In most cases, corporates do not include challenges or tests to stimulate the brain. Instead, they take a passive approach and the learner never gets clarity. Now that you have learned about the shortcomings of traditional training, you will never think of relying on the old boring techniques.
What Are the Key Elements of Gamification?
Here are a few game elements that can be added to any corporate training to gamify it:
Progress Level
Tracking progress is always fun. It keeps the learner engaged, helps in maintaining motivation, and offers the dopamine kick to keep them going. Without tracking progress, the learner might feel lost or even give up midway.
Digital Reward System
Badges, ranks, and certificates for every accomplishment mean the learner has earned a verification that goes beyond the growth within the company. In fact, digital certification is an exceptional way to gain a promotion or switch jobs.
Another motivation factor, the reward system, provides instant gratification that can help the employee earn some score for hitting a milestone.
Interactive Challenges
Using quizzes, changes, or problem-solving tasks that scratch the cognitive itch is an excellent way to stimulate the employee and reinforce learning. There can be a variety of challenge types, which can either be done solo or by collaborating with other team members.
Rank Board
A leaderboard or ranking system helps in offering validation to the high achiever. It helps create a healthy competitive environment where everyone aims to grow and learn.
All these gamifications work like a charm for the human mind. In fact, it makes training dynamic and rewarding, boosting the knowledge and retention power of the employee as well.
Benefits of Corporate Gamification
By now, we have established that gamified trainings are fun. All the game-related elements added to any training will target the pleasure principle to keep the learner motivated. Let’s look at some of the benefits of corporate gamification that can help you understand its importance better.
Boost Employee Engagement
Most people lose interest when they are exposed to lengthy and boring tasks. Game-like features fix this issue by dividing training into small, bite-size lessons that end with a challenge and score. All these features boost the engagement of the learner, and simultaneously make the training process more enjoyable.
Improve Attention Power
As technology is advancing and short-form content is becoming popular, the attention span is also shrinking. Now, learners easily get bored when they do not grasp an idea. With the help of bite-size interactive lessons, there’s a good chance that the student will stay attentive until the end.
Enhanced Information Retention
Most people learn something, but they fail to memorize and retain the information. With the gamification process, each step feels like an accomplishment and the learner gets to absorb all the concepts better. Learning through this process is not just fun but also helps in retaining knowledge long term.
Better Motivation Throughout
For every task that an individual performs, there is a need for strong motivation. Gamification involves reward points, scores, and leaderboards that ensure learners stay motivated, and push themselves to do everything just to complete the task at hand without getting distracted.
Contribute To Team Spirit
Team building is very important within the corporate culture, yet it becomes a challenge for most managers. With the help of gamification, management will foster a team-building spirit, encourage teamwork, and spark healthy competition that can get people going.
Real-Time Feedback
The tasks in a corporate setting run on delayed feedback. By the time a project is wrapped up, most participants might have already forgotten the details. Gamification comes with immediate feedback that helps the employee improve and track progress immediately.
Measurable Performance Metrics
In big corporations where employees are hired in bulk, tracking individual performance, and offering separate feedback can be quite challenging. However, with the gamification of the training, individuals get to track their own progress and performance. Moreover, they can also identify their shortcomings in real time and fix them.
What Are the Challenges of Corporate Gamification?
There is no doubt that the benefits of gamified trainings are compelling. However, it comes with a few unique challenges as well. Let’s look at some of the challenges standing in the way of mass adoption of corporate gamification.
- Validation and rewards like certification and badges can create over-dependence on external validation.
- The healthy competition might turn into a fierce one, leading to office politics.
- There is no one-size-fits-all model, which means bad execution can lead to a missing goal and eventually failure.
- Since gamification is still in the initial phase, designing for it can become a challenge.
- Gamification might require a lot of time to develop, but in the current stage, it can receive a lot of resistance from employees who are only familiar with the one-on-one training process.
- There is no hard and fast rule to measure the progress and success of gamification in a corporate setting.
Considering the benefits and challenges, it is safe to say that we will be seeing more corporates using fun trainings with gaming elements. Moreover, small companies can especially benefit from this, as they will get an opportunity to upskill their teams without spending billions on the process.
