Gamification Tools to Engage For An Effective Employee Training

Gamification has become a buzzword for learning management, but not all LMSs are created equal. Most e-learning tools use gamification to incentivize learners with badges or points. However, this is only the first step in using game-based learning to its full potential.

In this post, we’ll explore how gamified learning tools can help in training employees. We’ll discuss the following topics to help you better understand the benefits of investing in gamification tools.

This post will cover topics not limited to:

• What is Game-Based Learning? 
• What is the role of gamification in corporate learning?
• How Can It Be Used for Training?
• What problem is Gamification trying to solve?
• When not to use gamification as a tool for employee engagement?
• Gamification Tools for Game-Based Learning

What is Game-Based Learning?

Game-based learning transforms unassertive learning into assertive learning with study materials adopting the elements of the game. The transformation happening in traditional learning materials from passive to active state is due to the willingness of subject matter experts to increase retention and engagement of the users.

Through gamification, the transformation becomes seamless. As mentioned by one of the experts in the gamification industry, gamification is a craft of deriving the fun and addictive elements of the games and applying it to real-world materials or productive activities.

Since learning is endless, gamification is also applicable in the classroom and the workplace setting. However, the end goal of using this gamification tool will be different from that of the classroom setting. That’s because companies who will be using these tools will focus on boosting their employees’ productivity, retention, leadership management, and skills.

What is the role of gamification in corporate training?

Gamification provides less resistance than other methods in the corporate world. Staff will be more inclined to stick with it longer. Gamifying the learning experience can motivate and make it more likely to return happy and willing to sign up for future courses.

This is widely accepted as a key benefit of gamification – employee engagement. Gamified enterprise solutions often have excellent retention rates because employees are having so much fun while learning that they don’t want to conclude their training session just yet!

How Can It Be Used for Training?

Gamification tools can improve training success by using game elements such as scores, profiles, scoreboards, and challenges.

Challenges are nothing more than providing meaningful feedback that will motivate users to stay engaged with the system. That being said, it’s essential to make sure that the challenges match up with what your desired end goal is. If you want your employees to focus on team-based skills critical for collaboration or client service, then gamify these aspects of the business instead of putting all trainees on an individual level to “level up.”

What problem is Gamification trying to solve?

Gamification tries to solve a variety of engagement issues by using game logic and game mechanics as an attraction tool for participants. The gamified application offers a larger sense of autonomy, mastery, purpose, or social connections in the interface than traditional applications do.

One example is Punchtime, which gamifies time tracking by adding badges based on worker achievements and leaderboards that rank them against their peers. Gamification may help workers forget the drudgery of managing their desktops as “just one more thing to do” during what might otherwise be a tedious day.

The main advantages of gamification are that it forces people to do things they had never imagined doing and preoccupies them with what’s being offered instead of their outdated habits and idleness. It helps by making doing repetitive tasks more enjoyable as they’re given new meanings, like catching a rare animal in Pokémon GO.

When not to use gamification as a tool for employee engagement?

Gamification for employee engagement will not work if your company’s culture doesn’t support staff retention. Trust and optimism, for example, are significant factors in employee engagement and creating the right atmosphere where employees want to stay at the office longer than usual.

Engaging employees with a gamified strategy may fail because they lack the foundation elements necessary for employee engagement. To create an environment that fosters staff productivity, you should focus on achieving a trusting workplace where people genuinely want to share their ideas without being judged or ridiculed by others at the company.

That’s why it’s crucial to consider the following ideas when a company plans to organize a gamified corporate training:

• Make sure your company has a culture that supports success. Running games in an environment where people are afraid of being fired for mistakes doesn’t create sustainable engagement levels.
• Give game feedback to all employees so that there is consistency across the organization and so every employee feels they have a chance to do well.
• Find out what motivates them at what time of day they may be in a particular mood or mindset. You need that type of information to create engaging games that will incentivize their best performance levels on difficult tasks.

Gamification Tools for Game-Based Learning

There are many gamified tools that organizations can use to boost the efficacy of game-based learning. These are:

1. Badges

Training employees can earn badges every time they correctly answer training questions after each session. The number of questions that the training participants can answer varies. Badges can also come with special prizes for those who will earn more throughout the training event.

1. Leaderboards

The leaderboards can help training organizers identify the progress of the training participants. It can also encourage the trainees to do better once they see who’s leading in the leaderboards. Though it might create competition among the training participants, it’s a positive gamification tool because it will make the trainees more participative and motivated.

1. Points or purchase-based rewards

Training event participants become more cooperative if rewarded at the end of the training session. It can also increase the eagerness of the employees or participants to join the session and look forward to the next event. Ultimately, this gamification tool builds loyalty and retention among the users.

1. Virtual game activity

Virtual game activities like online escape games attract participants to join the training, team-buildings, or events because it’s a new digital experience. Though escape rooms have existed for years, online escape games are a new experience everybody wants to try because they are visually appealing and bring in a different kind of educational gaming experience. For a single escape game alone, there are a lot of things in store (good plots, themes, game mechanics, and visuals)!

These digital games provide an escape and adventure to most people who are inclined to technology. And it’s even an exciting activity to try because it contains a lot of challenges that resemble the task often performed in video games and tabletop games.

In Summary

The ideal learning management system uses gamification to drive behavior change and improve outcomes across three key areas of your organization: employee engagement, sales performance improvement, and learner retention.

By combining these three elements into one solution, you can maximize the return on investment (ROI) from your training program by increasing employee engagement and improving sales performance while reducing turnover rates among employees in high-risk roles like new hires or those who have been terminated within 12 months of hire date.

This means that every dollar spent on training results in a more significant ROI than traditional methods alone. That’s because it reduces costs associated with hiring replacements for lost talent as well as the cost of retraining them once they get regularized.

So if you’re looking for the best gamification tools you can integrate with your employee training, collaborate only with the pioneers in the industry. Contact our Cluehub specialist today.