When employers look at ways to improve their employee training, they’re likely to come across multiple articles discussing gamification. This increasingly popular concept is taking hold in employee training because it offers a way of spicing up your training in a way that seems to make sense. By turning training sessions into a sort of game for employees to complete, businesses have found that their new hires do a far better job of learning the material, engaging with the training and beginning the job with a more thorough understanding of their training.

Gamification gives employees a psychological reward

Regular employee training is often a chore for employees, who would rather get to work than complete dull reading assignments and simple comprehension tests. As a result, many are liable to skim or skip their training readings entirely, or only remember the material long enough to pass a brief quiz before allowing it all to slip out of their minds. The principal of gamification suggests that by turning lessons into a game, and by allowing employees to navigate through those lessons as though they are challenges, tasks or levels, employees are far more apt to engage seriously with the material and comprehend it.

Employees who are more engaged recall the information better in the long run, and internalize the training more efficiently. Employees are more engaged when they’re entertained or enjoying what they're doing, which is the benefit that gamification offers.

In addition, the nature of gaming, like the type you’ll find at CasinoCruise, allows employees to receive immediate feedback on what they’ve learned, which enables them to test a subject and figure out whether they comprehend it immediately, rather than several days into training. In addition, most training games can enable an employee to retry and practice a particular skill until they feel comfortable with it, which can help with retention of information and with performance.

Where to use gamification

Gamification makes training easier, and this is particularly true for the millennial generation that may have grown up playing similar games online. Businesses turning to gamification are often looking to advance and modernize in other ways, including attracting a millennial workforce. Businesses also frequently struggle with how to train that millennial workforce.

 Gamification offers the happy medium for keeping millennial employees engaged and interested in business training. In addition, gamification can work across a variety of disciplines. Companies can train customer support, sales staff, IT staff and executive leaders using this strategy.

Companies can use this not just to train new employees but to provide soft skills training, reminder courses or compliance training. It can also use gamification that encourages and enables social communication and social learning - for example, allowing employees to see each others’ scores and gently compete with one another can improve training performance by tapping into people's’ natural desire to win a game.

Not all games are suited for training, and a gamification program should keep in mind particular goals. This means, for example, a gamified training program should be designed to encourage mastery of skills, rather than simply garnering the most points. Employees should be encouraged to move onto a new task once a skill is fully mastered. How points are earned should also be designed to in some way reflect how the business operates. For example, if you have a gamification program for sales, points generated can mimic the commission an employee would earn for making that particular sale.

Gamification allows corporations and businesses to train employees in a way that engages and interests them, while still generating the desired results from the lessons. This method, adapted to the modern era, will attract younger and more adaptable employees, and will also enable your new hires and continuing employees to grasp concepts more easily and at their own pace. By adopting gamification training techniques, you can keep up with major competitors in the industry and keep your business ahead of the game.