Gamification in practice: 4 problems that you can solve now, implementing games in your company
Gamification in practice: 4 problems that you can solve now, implementing games in your company
4 minutes of reading
At this point, you already know that gamification is a powerful ally of companies that want to teach, train, educate and engage employees, right?
It does not make sense to dedicate several hours of the day to monotonous and tiring training activities, in which little or almost none of it is actually put into practice.
Think of those numerous training session handouts, those exercises without practical application or those meetings where all that participants want to do is to leave the room as soon as possible.
Gamification attempts to solve these engagement issues by using gaming logic to attract participants’ attention. With gamification, instead of handouts, participants get the content in the palm of their hands. Instead of long classes and seminars, they get duels of knowledge. Instead of getting bored, they have fun.
But why does gamification work so well for employee training? Which company issues can it solve? This is what you will discover next.
Why gamification?
Gamification’s success is based on a consensus: playing is much more fun than studying.
Unlike studying, playing games is supported by a tripod of characteristics:
• game immersion;
• immediate feedback on performance;
• collaboration.
When you learn while having fun, you feel like you’re not actually studying. Even so, the results are impressive in terms of engagement and knowledge retention.
Numerous published studies address gamification’s success. According to Gartner, a company that leads the American market in the IT research and consultancy segment, companies that adopt gamification identify an improvement of approximately 20% in employee engagement with the learning processes.
Also according to Gartner, about 40% of the Fortune 1000 companies (some of the largest American companies) have already implemented gamification to improve internal processes.
Now that you understand the potential of gamification for training purposes, let’s discuss some practical applications you can adopt in your company.
4 problems that gamification can solve in your company
To adopt gamification in your company, you need to invest in games that include rewards, scoring system, practical achievements, clear rules and constant competition. Great games also encourage cooperation between players.
By implementing this strategy, you will be able to solve many company issues, such as:
1. Employees lack of time to learn
A common problem that most companies encounter is the lack of time for training its employees. Thankfully, gamification is capable of solving this dilemma when implemented in the corporate day-to-day activities.
It is difficult to schedule recurring training sessions for employees that have no office hours left in the week for any activities other than their regular work responsibilities.
In this case, gamification is a good alternative, especially when combined with the principle of micro-learning. If you are not yet familiar with this concept, micro-learning is based on the idea of exposing the student to small portions of content and interactions, repeatedly.
2. Lack of engagement with relevant content
If your company employs Generation Y employees, born in the 90s, you may have already noticed that retaining their attention is not a simple task.
It is even more difficult when we talk about putting these employees through long training hours, that involve the use of powerpoint presentations, handouts and technical books.
Again, gamification comes to mind as the perfect solution, as games promote interaction, have immediate feedback and guarantee players immersion in the content – and in the learning activity.
3. You don’t know how to disseminate concepts in a practical way
Imagine a scenario in which your company is changing the entire internal management system, from cash flow, inventory control and even invoice issuing.
If a system has been rooted in the company’s culture for several years, changing it can be traumatic and time consuming to those who need to be ramped up in the new process.
By using gamification to train employees on the new system, you speed up the process, make it more fun, and eliminate any barriers that could be imposed during knowledge dissemination.
4. The team presents integration problems
Most 21st century companies face the same issues related to lack of integration, collaboration and unity among employees.
The lack of cooperation among employees usually generates rework, as well as other issues that could have been avoided had there been more assertive communication in everyday life.
By using gamification to propose work challenges, encourage interaction and integration among the team, you are able to mitigate the issues mentioned above.
Conclusion
Were you able to understand the advantages of using gamification in a professional environment?
By investing in this technology, you embrace what is most innovative when it comes to business training and show to your employees that you are not only looking at the quality of the training content, but also to its format.
This attitude change can bring lasting benefits to your company.
Here at Bravi, we are gamification enthusiasts, and we have various examples of successful applications of this methodology in everyday life.
Did you like the post and want to implement gamification in your company? We are available to chat!