Corporate Gamification Is Much More Than Just Fun and Games

Gamification is fun and games for boring things

Educators who are accustomed to more traditional teaching methods may view corporate gamification as a trivial waste of time. They may view games as a valueless distraction from work. They don’t see how gamification can possibly add anything of worth to the corporate environment.

Fortunately, their perception is mistaken. Gamification is bringing elements that are typical to games into training activities. This includes scoring points, moving up in levels, and earning rewards. Corporate gamification provides new ways of motivating employees to desire to progress further in the game and increase learning.

Gamification is a valid component to a well-rounded training program for businesses who wish to prepare their employees for their work in the most comprehensive way possible.

What’s the value in corporate gamification?

The training of employees by their companies has come a long way from traditional classroom learning. Gamification has opened a door to another level of preparedness and understanding.

Here are some of the reasons gamification provides so much value:

It encourages internal motivation. The desire to learn is driven by the desire to do well in the game. It’s personally rewarding. An employee who is motivated by intrinsic factors, as opposed to extrinsic factors, has a better chance of truly learning.

The employees are actively participating. It’s all about active learning, as opposed to passive learning, which would entail reading about something or listening to someone speak about something. The doing brings about understanding. Gamification heads off the boredom and disinterest that can come from lecture, reading a training manual, or watching a video. Having fun while learning engages the learner and makes gamification a benefit over traditional training methods.

There’s a higher rate of retention. Games actually have a positive effect on the brain’s ability to recall and remember information. It’s imperative that an employee is able to pull up information they learned in a game setting and relate it to a real-life situation they will encounter in the course of their work. Greater retention leads to a higher level of performance.

Cooperative learning taps into healthy competition. Working with others allows learners to view things more comprehensively and to see issues from different perspectives they may not have thought of on their own. It also breeds healthy competition. Employees can compare scores and results, driving them to improve and do better than their peers.

More than just having fun

Calling on the likes of Benjamin Franklin illustrates the importance of elearning gamification. He said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

There is simple wisdom in that sentiment. While Ben Franklin was not thinking about corporate gamification, the idea is the same.

It is so much better to involve the learner in an active way. That’s where the real learning takes place.

Contact Designing Digitally Inc. to learn how your corporate training can be enhanced to increase retention, improve productivity, and lead to better profitability.