Benefits and Best Practice for Training Simulations

When training simulation and businesses combine, there is great potential for companies to excel. Combining game elements with simulation and interactive learning creates a solution that has a plethora of benefits.

Business training simulations have a variety of benefits, but most importantly, they put learners in a realistic scenario that they will encounter while on the job. Learners are placed in an environment that reflects that of the “real world”, which is something that allows them to see the benefits and effects of their decisions in an immediate way. For example, if you are training your sales team to better handle calls and pitches, going through a simulation will enable them to visualize their results and make better decisions on situations or challenges faced during such calls.

Yet, there are many other benefits that companies will experience when going through training simulations and executing best practices. Below are the training simulation benefits and best practices that your company will experience when launching such a program for your business.

Your business will benefit from accelerated performance.

Did you know that people learn about 70% of their jobs informally through experience, 20% through relationships, and 10% through formal training methods? These statistics are outstanding - and true. When your business strategizes and launches a training simulations plan, you will experience the benefits of accelerated performance. Not only will you impact a learner’s knowledge of material, you will also help impact their general skills.

Your employees will be more engaged.

Take a look at your current training program. Is it built and launched inside a classroom? Have you received feedback from your employees on the program’s success or challenges? Are you finding that your employees are not as engaged as they could or should be?

With training simulation, your employees will be much more engaged than they are inside a classroom. That is, if you follow the best practices to make your employees engaged.

The top three considerations when building a training program are:

1. Is the program challenging the users?

Your training program should challenge your users in such a way that they are thinking about their next move or decision, whether it’s using decision making or problem solving skills. To do so, we recommend beta testing your program with a select number of users, collect feedback and make optimizations before launching with your entire company.

Have you built gamification in the process?

Gamification can increase engagement and overall positive feedback around your program. Gamification encourages competition which, in a workplace, can yield great results.

Am I reaching different learning styles with my training simulation?

While some people are visual learners, others are more auditory. Corporate training simulation should keep this in mind. Consider giving exposure to diverse activities and learning habits.

Training simulation will provide quantitative data analysis.

With classroom learning, you will often receive quantitative data exclusively. Aside from testing at the end of a session, a classroom instructor will only receive data around feelings, how the user feels about the program, what questions they have and what they would like to see next.

With training simulation, you will receive quantitative data analysis. You will draw data from the inputs that learners make into the simulation system. The more sessions that you hold, the greater the data analysis will be. This means that you can make decisions and optimizations based on the data, instead of relying exclusively on qualitative data.

Now, it is also important to draw qualitative data through the process. In addition to monitoring the quantitative data, you should frequently check-in with your users to determine how they feel about the training simulation, and improvements or optimizations they would like to see.

Through training simulation, your company is sure to experience a great deal of benefits. By following best practices such as creating competition with your game, using gamification and considering the benefits of building for various learning styles, your training simulation strategy will deliver a wealth of benefits in this calendar year.

Questions about what training simulation can do for you and your business? Connect with Designing Digitally today.