Unlocking the Power of Play: How Gamification Can Revolutionize Employee Learning and Development

There's lots of talk of gamification out there right now.

But sadly, there's also a lot of confusion and downright disinformation around exactly what it means, what it can do (in detail), and how they'd go about actually deploying the principles into their workplace.

This article aims to answer those questions, and bring much-needed clarity for those seeking new and innovative ways to engage, motivate and inspire their employees. 

🎵 You've Lost that Playful Feeling 🎵

Our L&D ancestors had the best intentions, but sadly didn't know what we know now about how people learn best. And this is why traditional learning and development (L&D) methods can often fall short, leaving employees disengaged, struggling to retain information and "considering their options."

This is where gamification and play comes in.

Gamification and play tap into the brain's intrinsic mechanisms for learning, leveraging the natural human proclivity for exploration, challenge, and reward. 

When engaged in gameplay, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, which enhances memory formation and motivational processes. This biological response not only makes the learning process more enjoyable but also more effective. 

It fosters a positive emotional connection to learning, enabling better retention of information and aligns with the brain's preference for active, experiential learning, where knowledge is constructed through doing and reflecting on the experience, rather than passive absorption of information. 

Gamification and play embody a powerful methodology that aligns with the brain's workings to maximize learning outcomes.

But What the Heck is Gamification Anyway?

Ok, boring definition time...

"Gamification" is the strategic use of game-like elements in non-game contexts. It can be applied to a wide range of activities, including employee training, onboarding, and continuous learning. 

By incorporating well-known game mechanics such as points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges, gamification can make learning more engaging, enjoyable, and effective. 

That's just the start, and there's a lot more to it than just this (natch.)

But even if you get this a little bit of it right, the benefits can be absolutely nuclear...

• Increased Engagement: Gamification makes learning more fun and interactive, which can lead to increased employee engagement. When employees are engaged, they are more likely to pay attention, participate, and retain information.
• Improved Motivation: Gamification can help to motivate employees by providing them with a sense of accomplishment and progress. As employees complete challenges and earn rewards, they are more likely to be motivated to continue learning.
• Enhanced Knowledge Retention: Gamification can help employees to retain information more effectively by making learning more active and memorable. When employees are engaged in game-like activities, they are more likely to process and store information in their long-term memory.
• Boosted Application of Learning: Gamification can help employees to apply what they learn in real-world scenarios. By providing employees with opportunities to practice their skills in a safe and simulated environment, gamification can help them to transfer their learning to the job.
• Greater Collaboration and Teamwork: Gamification can encourage collaboration and teamwork among employees. By working together to achieve common goals, employees can develop stronger relationships and communication skills.
• Higher Cost Efficiency Through Retention: Employee retention significantly reduces recruitment, onboarding, and training expenses, while capitalizing on the accrued knowledge and experience of long-term staff to enhance operational efficiency and productivity.
• Improved Student Well-Being and Self-Improvement: Fostering an environment that promotes happiness, positivity, and satisfaction among students not only enhances their academic and personal growth but also cultivates a culture of continuous self-improvement and achievement.

#WinWinWin am I right?

OK, let's now talk about how to actually do it...

Our Specific, Proven, Battle-tested Strategies for Implementing Gamification in Your Employee L&D

While we can't go into SUPER deep detail in this article, there definitely are some foundational ways we always recommend deploying gamification techniques in employee L&D. 

Here are a few strategies to get you started:

Points 🕹️

Every app and game ever made gives you points when you take action. It may sound simple, but it works: everyone young and old LOVES to collect points.

You can give points for tasks such as: watching training content, completing tasks, quiz responses, document uploads, button clicks, achieving milestones, commenting and even just participating in activities or the community!

Literally just award points to this stuff and students will want to keep earning them day and night.

(Editor note: It’s like being in Vegas but much healthier wins!)

As for what they do with the points, I'll be writing a whole article about that in the near future, but until then, here are 10 valuable ways you could allow employees to use, redeem or otherwise "cash in" points for that align beautifully with common business outcomes:

• Professional Development Opportunities: Accumulated points could be exchanged for access to special training sessions, workshops, or courses that are not available to everyone. This incentivizes continuous learning and personal development.
• Mentorship Sessions: Points could be redeemed for one-on-one mentorship sessions with senior leaders or specialists in the company. This could provide invaluable insights and guidance for career development.
• Exclusive Resources Access: Redeem points for exclusive access to industry reports, research papers, or advanced tools that can aid in their work or personal development.
• Workplace Perks: Points could be used to claim various workplace perks, such as a prime parking spot for a month, a better office setup, or the ability to work from home for a set number of days.
• Recognition and Awards: Points could go towards nominations for employee of the month or other recognition programs, highlighting their achievements in front of peers and management.
• Company Swag: Redeem points for company-branded merchandise such as apparel, bags, or tech gadgets. This not only serves as a reward but also promotes company pride.
• Conference or Seminar Attendance: Points can be used to cover registration fees for relevant conferences or seminars, encouraging continuous learning and networking.
• Team Lunch or Outing: Teams or individuals could use points to fund a team lunch or outing, fostering team bonding and providing a break from the routine work environment.
• Charitable Donations: Offer an option to convert points into a monetary donation to a charity of the employee’s choice, promoting social responsibility and giving back to the community.
• Customized Job Experience: Points could be used to create a customized job experience for a day or week, such as shadowing a CEO, participating in cross-departmental projects, or even choosing a specific project to work on.

Badges 🎖️

In its most basic sense, a "badge" is simply a way to visually represent achievements, skills and milestones.

One origin theory I've seen is that they came from the world of the military where everyone has a visual indication of rank (along with any special medals they've earned during their service.)

You may also recognize them from the world of martial arts where belt colors are the obvious markers of how "dangerous" you might be. 🥷

Whatever their origins, the most important thing to understand is that they bring people pride, "bragging rights", "social proof", which is great, but more importantly they make others aspire to want to earn them too.

They also create an exclusive "inner circle" that others want to be part of and represent progress, accomplishment, and exclusivity in a way that's motivating and inspiring.

With this in mind, it's obvious why video games instantly jumped onto the badge bandwagon: the more a player plays, the more badges they earn. And players with more badges and visual bling always inspire and motivate the "newbies" to work hard to up-level.

If you can collect them, people want them, and that's why they work so well in any kind of elearning environment. When you give badges to recognize employee achievements and progress, people will literally learn as a byproduct of collecting the badges.

As for what they do with the badges, I'll be writing a whole article about that in the near future, but until then, here are 10 valuable ways to make badges more useful company-wide that align beautifully with larger business outcomes:

• Resume and Professional Profile Enhancements: Encourage employees to add earned digital badges to their professional networking profiles (like LinkedIn) or digital resumes. This publicly recognizes their skills and can aid in career advancement.
• Internal Job Mobility: Use badges as prerequisites or recommendations for internal job postings. Employees with certain badges could be automatically considered for promotions or specific roles, incentivizing continuous learning.
• Recognition in Performance Reviews: Incorporate badges into the performance review process, where the acquisition of certain badges can be a factor in evaluating an employee's development and achievements over the review period.
• Access to Advanced Projects: Grant employees who have earned specific badges the opportunity to work on advanced or high-profile projects. This not only rewards their learning efforts but also applies their new skills in meaningful ways.
• Mentorship Roles: Employees who earn badges in certain areas could be given opportunities to mentor others seeking to learn the same skills. This fosters a culture of knowledge sharing and community learning.
• Reward Systems: Create a system where digital badges can be exchanged for rewards, such as bonus points, gift cards, extra vacation days, or even monetary bonuses. This tangible recognition can boost motivation.
• Leadership and Development Programs: Use the acquisition of certain badge combinations as a criterion for enrollment in leadership development or high-potential employee programs. This aligns skill development with career progression opportunities.
• Customized Learning Paths: Analyze the badges earned by employees to tailor future learning opportunities and recommendations. This personalized approach can enhance skill development and job satisfaction.
• Collaboration and Networking: Create forums or groups for employees who have earned specific badges. This encourages networking, fosters a sense of community, and facilitates knowledge exchange among employees with similar skills or interests.
• Visibility and Branding: Feature employees who have earned notable badges in company newsletters, intranet sites, or on social media. This not only celebrates their achievement but also promotes the company's commitment to employee development and continuous learning.

Leaderboards 🏆

Everyone's favorite gamification element must be leaderboards!

They can enhance learning engagement, motivate continuous improvement, and foster a competitive yet collaborative learning environment.

Visually ranking participants based on their progress, achievements, or performance in various learning activities can tap into the intrinsic motivation of learners, encouraging them to engage more deeply with the content and strive for better performance.

But not so fast – they also a dark side to them.

We all want to be in the top 10, but what happens when we're not?

The answer to this question is why they're a little trickier than you'd expect to pull off correctly in elearning environments!

Think about it – if the top 10 on the board feel great, how do you feel if you're not?

Exactly – you feel bummed out. Demotiavted. Possibly to the point of wanting to give up, or at best, just phone in the bare minimum effort. Obviously that's the outcome you absolutely DON'T want.

Yu-kai Chou, the author of Actionable Gamification, is known for saying that the role of a leaderboard is to generate "urgent optimism" for players, which means it helps them to take action right away (urgently), and keeps them feeling optimistic about it at the same time.

That's why we're tackling leaderboards in a different way at Engagify, so this never happens.

Here are a few best practices to design and use leaderboards to help realize business goals:

• Inclusive Design: Create leaderboards that account for different levels of expertise and learning paces to encourage participation from all learners. This could involve segmenting leaderboards by department, role, or creating different categories for different types of achievements.
• Balance Competition and Collaboration: While fostering competition, it's important to also encourage collaboration among learners. Leaderboards that reward group achievements or peer assistance can help maintain a balanced learning culture.
• Provide Constructive Feedback: Use the leaderboard as a tool for providing constructive, personalized feedback to learners. This can help them understand how they can improve and what specific areas to focus on.

When integrating leaderboards into a corporate elearning strategy, it's crucial to monitor their impact carefully. Poorly implemented leaderboards can often have unintended effects, leading to negative competition, stress, and a focus on ranking over actual learning. 

Balancing the leaderboard's competitive aspects with the overall goal of fostering a supportive, engaging, and effective learning environment is key.

Additionally, ensuring that the criteria for success on the leaderboard are transparent, fair, and aligned with the learning objectives will help mitigate potential downsides.

But when thoughtfully designed and implemented, leaderboards can significantly enhance the eLearning experience in a corporate setting. They can motivate learners, encourage active participation, and create a dynamic and interactive learning environment that benefits both individuals and the organization as a whole.

Urgency & FOMO ⏰⌛

Urgency & Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) are almost never used in Learning & Development, but human nature responds to it, big time, and when used right, it helps learners to prioritize their learning.

Here are some great ways to use urgency and FOMO inside your elearning environment:

• Visual countdown timers can show deadlines for completion of content, to encourage learners to complete tasks within the required timeframe. This visual representation of time ticking down can motivate quicker action and sustained focus. Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available, and in the same way, countdowns help people "get it done."
• For optional or voluntary courses, workshops or sessions, countdown timers can show when enrollment is closing which can drive immediate enrollments, leveraging FOMO by highlighting the limited availability of learning opportunities.
• Early Access for Fast Movers: Offer early access to new courses or resources for the first group of learners who sign up or complete prerequisite activities. This creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency.
• Limited Seats for Live Sessions: Announce that live training sessions, webinars, or Q&A with experts have limited spots available. This can create a rush to secure a place, utilizing FOMO to boost sign-up rates.

Åt Engagify we've pioneered a bunch of different ways to inject urgency & FOMO into the elearning experience.

Variable Rewards & Pattern Interrupts

They're not commonly used in learning, but when combined, these are two of the most powerful tools you can use in your elearning experience to keep students highly engaged.

Variable Rewards tap into the human brain's reward centers, creating a sense of anticipation and excitement. 

In an elearning context, we recommend setting up seemingly-random rewards for completing modules, contributing to discussions, or achieving high scores on assessments. These rewards could range from digital badges and certificates to tangible incentives like gift cards or extra vacation time. The unpredictability of the reward type and timing keeps learners engaged, constantly coming back for more to see what they might earn next.

Pattern Interrupts are designed to break the monotony of traditional learning by introducing unexpected elements that re-engage attention. 

Some ideas: 

• Break up a monotone training with a humorous giphy or meme related to the course material
• Give unexpected amounts of points or even surprise prizes
• Impromptu live sessions can jolt learners out of passive consumption and into active engagement. 

These surprises can help maintain focus and interest throughout the training program.

Celebrations play a crucial role in acknowledging achievements, big or small. 

Celebratory messages, animations, or even sound effects upon completing tasks or reaching milestones can significantly boost morale. In a corporate setting, celebrating learning milestones not only recognizes & validates the individual's effort but also fosters a positive learning culture within the organization.

It makes the learning journey enjoyable and memorable.

Sound Effects, when used judiciously, can enhance the learning experience by providing auditory feedback for interactions and achievements.

A simple "achievement" or applause sound effect when a learner selects the correct answer or completes a module adds an extra layer of satisfaction and engagement. These auditory cues, much like in video gaming, can make the learning process more dynamic and rewarding, and folks can even come to look forward to them.

Caveat emptor: integrating these four elements into elearning platforms requires thoughtful design and implementation to ensure they add value without becoming distractions. 

When done right, they can make a potentially boring corporate training not just truly engaging, but also a genuinely enjoyable experience for learners, encouraging action while fostering a culture of continuous improvement and achievement.

Community

There's a reason why “gym buddies” help us to keep going to the gym when we would have given up.

Just like a gym buddy, a great community can help students stay motivated, on track and taking action.

Creating a community in corporate training involves developing a space where learners can interact, share insights, challenge each other, and grow together. 

This can be done through forums, discussion boards, and social media groups dedicated to the course or training program where learners can post questions, share resources, and discuss real-world applications of the course material. 

This peer-to-peer interaction not only enriches the learning experience but also builds a network of support, encouraging learners to engage more deeply with the content and with each other.

We suggest leveraging community features to add a social dimension to learning, transforming it from a passive to an active process. 

By incorporating elements like group challenges, where learners work together to solve problems or complete projects, organizations can foster a sense of teamwork and collective achievement. Leaderboards can be used not just to highlight individual success but also to celebrate group accomplishments, further strengthening the community bond.

Live events, such as webinars or Q&A sessions with subject matter experts, can also contribute to the community feeling by bringing learners together in real-time. These events provide opportunities for live interaction, immediate feedback, and the chance to connect with instructors and peers on a more personal level.

Additionally, recognizing and celebrating the achievements of community members can motivate learners and reinforce the value of their contributions. Highlighting success stories or exemplary contributions can inspire others and showcase the real-world impact of the learning community.

In essence, fostering a community within a corporate training environment can:

• Transform the learning experience from an individual task to a collective journey
• Lead to higher engagement, better retention, and a more enjoyable learning process
• Create a more supportive, interactive, and motivating training environment that encourages continuous learning and development!

Personalization & Customization of the Experience

Personalization & customization in a corporate training environment is a game-changer and can directly impact learner engagement, retention, and overall satisfaction. 

Internally at Engagify, we're championing the creation of dynamic and personalized learning experiences, which tailor training to individual needs, interests, and learning styles.

These kinds of "choose your own adventure" style experiences can significantly enhance the effectiveness of corporate eLearning programs.

Some examples:

• We embed student's name everywhere inside the course experience, along with many other pieces of information we have on the student, along with links to their own personal feedback documents
• We send strategic communications to the student as they reach and proceed past important milestones in their journey, so they feel like their experience matters to us, and that we're watching
• We use the students' own actions to decide upon the best next steps for them, and even allow students to make that decision for themselves!
• Our Student Rescue Campaign that detects when students might be struggling, and reaches out with emails and messages to get them back on track
• Our famous "Binge Mode" (inspired by Netflix). Most platforms keep students locked into a rigid content release schedule.  This can kill student motivation, especially if they're extra-excited and want to get ahead, or simply want to carve out a chunk of time to make huge progress in your course! To keep students engaged & excited, we innovated “Binge Mode" which automatically releases each new piece of content only once the previous has been consumed, so the student is never held back when they want to keep going!

Some Inspiring L&D Gamification Examples

Many organizations are already using gamification to improve their employee L&D programs. Here are a few examples:

• Salesforce uses gamification to motivate its sales reps to achieve their targets. The company uses a points system, badges, and leaderboards to track rep progress and recognize top performers.
• Adobe uses gamification to train its employees on new products and features. The company uses a scenario-based learning game that allows employees to practice their skills in a simulated environment.
• EY uses gamification to onboard new employees. The company uses a game-like experience that introduces new hires to the company culture, values, and products.
• AccelQ used Engagify to gamify their coding training. Students immediately engaged in a deeper way, with a 34% higher course completion rate and a 12% higher average salary for graduates.
• Vimeo.com used Engagify to engage & educate content creation partners about how to use the features of their software
• Pharma company Omnicare implemented a baseball-themed gamification strategy in 2013 to motivate its help desk team. This resulted in 100% employee participation and reduced customer wait times by 50%.
• EE, the UK's largest mobile operator, launched a gamified LMS which lead to an impressive knowledge assessment score of 99%, with 92% of staff saying it had increased their digital skills.

Getting Started with Gamification

If you're interested in deploying gamification in your employee L&D programs, there are a few things to keep in mind. 

First: clearly define your goals and objectives.  What do you hope to achieve by using gamification? Once you know your goals, we can help you develop a gamification strategy that aligns with them.

Second: it's SO important to keep it simple.  DO NOT try to overcomplicate your gamification program. Start with a few simple mechanics and gradually add more complexity as needed.

Third: it is CRITICAL to get buy-in from your employees. Make sure that your employees understand that things could be about to get more fun for them.

Fourth: it's SUPER important to measure your results. Track the impact of your gamification program on employee engagement, motivation, happiness, knowledge retention, and application of learning. (But mostly happiness.)

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By following these tips, you can use gamification to create a more engaging, effective, and enjoyable learning experience for your employees.

I hope this article has given you a better understanding of gamification and its potential to revolutionize employee learning and development. 

If you'd like to chat about how we can help to develop a customized gamification solution for your organization, we'd love to chat.

Just click the link below to reserve a time on my calendar to get the ball rolling.