boost learning with gamification

Most enterprises have endless pages of highly important information their employees need to know about such as product updates, compliance regulations and more. 

There is just one slight problem: This information is complex, hard to grasp and worst of all … boring and time consuming. Sounds familiar? Check out these 5 steps to boost motivation, compliance and knowledge in your organization. (Btw: This is also called gamification.)

So what is gamification anyway? It is when you boost learning results by adding game mechanics.

Could gamification be the answer to some the challenges faced by big enterprises in our age of ‘information overload’? Such as competence gaps, information getting lost and misalignment between management and the front desk? Yes! All of these can be mitigated via gamification. Let’s take a look at how you can benefit from gamification too.

1. Use Game Mechanics

It doesn’t have to be difficult to add game mechanics in learning and development: Simply define a clear goal for your user and set some simple rules. And let the game begin! Design the game so that relevant competences are learnt when playing. You can do this by including an embedded hand book and a few quizzes in the game.

2. Make it Personal

We humans like to feel that we are special. You can take advantage of this and use it for creating better learning experiences. Create ’adaptive’ learning by taking inspiration from this example from McDonald’s Food Safety Learning Game. Before the user can start, he has to dress his character and choose his own clothing as well as ethnicity. This makes for at much more personal learning experience. And learners become more engaged - and therefore learn more.

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3. Use Storytelling to Catch and Retain Focus

Nothing is more sad than abstract knowledge without a clear purpose. Endless concepts and explanations make us feel like tiny cogs in a big machine. But we are humans. Not ‘containers of knowledge’. When you use gamification, begin with creating a story that will ‘set the scene’, motivate your user and prepare him to receive learning. The user is your main character and he can become a true ‘hero’ when he completes his mission.

4. Get Rid of Motivation Killers

We have found that the worst motivation killer in e-learning is unfortunately also a common feature! And users are likely to come across it a few times: ‘Press, OK to finish.’ (You can almost hear users crying!) Imagine that you have successfully prepared for a difficult test and passed it. And all you get is: ’SAVE’ / ’Press OK to finish’. How sad! Why not have a little ‘gold at the end of the rainbow’? You can use confetti, balloons or some other visual celebration, which fits in with your company culture and visual identity. Does it sound too silly for you? Don’t worry. The point is to give your learner great motivation and boost learning results.

5. Create Healthy Competition in Your Organization

Why not add an element of competition? This is a totally free way to boost motivation. (And HR does not even have to give out gift certificates or cinema tickets to the winners.)

You can design competitions that create team spirit by letting the Sales department compete against the IT department. 

Or you can let shops compete against each other if you are a retail chain. We suggest: Avoid exposing the bad ranking departments by showing only the 20 best percent on your big screen in the canteen or on your intranet.

With this said, let the game begin and let’s boost learning results.