Gamification Training: Does It Really Work?

You’ve spent hours building out an employee training program. Maybe you’ve made use of all the best practices, leveraging interactive video and AI video presentations to make learning easy.

But still, engagement with your training content is lower than expected. Is gamification the solution to your problem?

Gamification – motivational elements that you typically find in gaming and apply to other domains – sounds like it can be a powerful way to improve employee engagement.

But is gamified training really effective?

In this article, we’ll examine the ins and outs of gamified training, diving into the common features and use cases and presenting the evidence for the use of gamification in corporate training programs.

What is gamification training? 

Gamification training is the use of game design elements and mechanics in workplace training strategies or training videos.

For instance, game designers use strategies like competitive leaderboards and probabilistic rewards to draw on human motivational systems and compel them to play for longer.

You can bring many of these tactics over to the corporate training realm to reap the benefits of greater employee engagement while simultaneously developing new skill sets and improving worker capabilities.

Is gamification training effective?

Is gamification a valid tactic to invest in or just another fad that sounds great but doesn’t bring effective and measurable results? Let’s let the data speak for itself.

One Harvard Business School study showed that gamified training has a positive impact on both performance and engagement, resulting in a whopping 35% increase in sales. The study results also suggested that gamified training made employees more capable of developing new client relationships.

As HBR notes, a higher willingness to train translated to a 16% increase in sales, and those offices that had higher engagement to begin with increased the number of total new business opportunities by 8% more than those who had lower job engagement.

These insights show that increasing engagement with training is a key catalyst to reaping the results of enhanced performance post-training, which is where leadership comes in.

As Wei Cai, one of the researchers on the Harvard study, explains in her article for Columbia Business School, leadership engagement is critical.

Businesses with higher rates of leadership engagement in the gamified training program increased employee engagement and thus witnessed greater increases in performance.

‍Workplace gamification training can be a truly powerful and motivational force that drives individual performance results.

The challenges of building custom gamification training 

The best gamified training is that which can be personalized and customized to the needs of your organization. Achieving that goal, however, comes with a few distinct challenges.

Aligning game mechanics with learning objectives 

Game mechanics are the specific elements that you incorporate into your training program. Leaderboards, achievement badges, and challenges are all examples of game mechanics that might be used in corporate training. 

However, ensuring that the game mechanics you choose line up with the learning outcomes you want employees to exhibit can be a major challenge.

For instance, a common game element is the use of points, which employees typically accumulate by finishing training modules.

If not implemented correctly, the use of points can incentivize the rapid completion of modules rather than prompt learners to absorb the information you want them to learn. In this case, your game mechanics aren’t aligned with your learning objectives.

Pro tip: Integrating gamification into your LMS platform is a great way to bring your training content to new heights. 

Creating meaningful rewards 

Rewards are an integral component of gamification. But the best rewards are those that are meaningful to the individual, inspiring them to engage in further training.

For some employees, financial rewards may be effective. For others, flexible working hours or paid time off may be more meaningful.

The trick here is to personalize rewards as much as possible, which adds an additional element of complexity to your gamification strategy.

Managing costs and resources 

Finally, there’s the time and cost involved in gamifying training. Creating the video training content itself can be time-consuming and costly, unless you’re using an AI video tool like Colossyan to quickly generate realistic videos.

Implementing a scoring, leaderboard, and achievement system often requires a dedicated software solution, either bought or built, which is an additional cost. Then, there’s the time you’ll need to plan and orchestrate gamification as well as optimize the strategy based on user feedback.

All of this can lead many organizations to abandon the idea of gamification altogether. 

Features of effective gamification training 

Now that you’ve got a grasp on the real-life benefits of gamification on the learning experience, you’re probably wondering what kind of gamification elements have the best impact on knowledge retention, learner engagement, and employee performance.

Here are a few of the most effective gamification features.

Points and scoring

The starting point for most gamified training plans is the implementation of a point accumulation and scoring system. Employees can collect points for engaging in training courses, passing assessments and quizzes, or completing any other activities in the digital learning environment.

Accumulating points can be an important incentive in its own right, but it’s most effective when coupled with rewards.

Rewards

Use reward systems to activate dopamine pathways and increase motivation to complete specific activities.

Employees can usually cash in points for rewards, but it is also a good idea to use probabilistic (semi-random) rewards for specific activities, such as module completion, to increase the effectiveness of your gamified learning strategy.

Leaderboards and competition

A bit of friendly competition is always a good thing for motivation and is an easy-to-implement game-based learning initiative. 

By setting up a simple leaderboard, and perhaps tracking the points each employee is racking up, you can inspire team members to engage in more training to win the prize.

You can also use gamification strategies that inspire healthy competition to bring teams together and encourage cohesion, such as a special competition or leaderboard that measures team engagement with training material.

Badges and achievements 

Providing employees with the opportunity to earn achievements and badges for specific activities taps into the same intrinsic motivation system that drives us to purchase brand-name clothing, jewelry, and cars.

Intrinsic motivation is a powerful engagement driver. You can reward employees with badges for completing different learning paths, such as finishing health and safety or first aid training.

Use cases for gamification 

Let’s now turn our attention to four real-world use cases for gamifying your corporate learning program.

1. Employee onboarding

Employee onboarding is a fantastic place to use gamification, as new hires need to go through multiple training modules before they’re ready to work autonomously. 

The faster you can get them through that training, the faster they’ll be performing as full team members. Gamification is one of the best ways to ensure they complete their onboarding materials quickly and efficiently.

2. Compliance training

Employees often engage in compliance training begrudgingly.

Leadership recognizes its importance, but employees often see it as something that removes them from their day-to-day tasks and harms productivity.

You can flip that viewpoint on its head by using gamification practices to improve engagement with compliance training content.  

3. Sales training

The most effective sales departments regularly engage in additional training and development.

Gamification can be an important way to motivate reps to engage in more sales training and continue to upskill, which will have a win-win outcome as they see the impact of this training on their sales results.

4. Product knowledge 

All employees – but especially those who are customer-facing (think sales, service, and support) – can benefit from a stronger understanding of the products you sell.

Gamification can support improving product knowledge, too. 

For instance, employees could earn additional points for engaging in product training and collect badges for passing product knowledge quizzes with a score of 95% or higher.

How to get started with gamification training 

About to implement your first gamified training program? Follow these quick set-up steps as a short workflow guide:

1. Define your learning objectives

Begin by making clear what you want your gamified training program to achieve.

For example, your objective might be to increase the effectiveness of an existing skill, impart a new skill to employees in a particular role, or create more general awareness of health and safety risks.

2. Create a learning content creation plan

Next, build out your learning content calendar, planning the different content modules and how they relate to the learning objectives you’ve just clarified.

If your goal is to upskill customer-facing team members to create more revenue from existing customers, you might plan out training sessions like:

• Product knowledge training that allows customer support to handle queries and technical issues more effectively
• Customer relationship management and upselling tutorials for account managers
• Effective user onboarding sequences to drive up adoption

You’ll also want to operationalize your content creation plan, allocating responsibilities and determining what tools (such as AI video creation platforms) you’ll use to execute the plan. 

3. Design your game mechanics

Here’s where the gamification part comes in.

Determine what game mechanics are most apt for your team and which have the best shot at creating engagement with your training content.

If the training you’re rolling out is a company-wide health and safety program, a competition-based approach might work well, paired with a leaderboard and performance-based rewards.

On the other hand, if training is going to be more individualized, with each employee reviewing specific content modules depending on their roles, then a points-based system with achievements and rewards might be a better fit.

For example, incorporating branching scenarios into your interactive videos can be a great way to engage learners while also ensuring the content they’re viewing is personalized to their role or skill level. 

Here’s what a branching scenario looks like using a tool like Colossyan – user decision-making determines the content shown, allowing for a “choose your own adventure” style of video. Additionally, learning designers are able to allow jumping between branches in case learners need to go back to a previous screen. 

4. Determine implementation and delivery

Now, it’s time to plan the roll-out of your gamified training by answering questions like:

• How will we track points and create leaderboards? Will we do it manually in a tool like Excel or use a dedicated training delivery solution like TalentLMS or Continu?
• How will we introduce the new training system to our team? Will we hold an all-hands meeting, communicate via a Slack message, or incorporate a custom AI avatar video?
• Who will be in charge of distributing rewards such as paid leave, company swag, and financial payouts?

5. Test, measure, and optimize 

Use surveys and ask for feedback from your team to see what they find motivating and what elements they don’t gel with.

Track how engagement with certain learning modules improves and analyze how certain game elements impact engagement so you can roll out those learnings in future content modules.

Supercharge your gamified training with Colossyan 

Gamified training can be a powerful way to improve employee retention, drive up productivity, and ultimately create more capable, engaged workers.

For the most effective, engaging training programs, video content is a must. It's far more engaging than written content and, for many, facilitates better knowledge retention and learning outcomes.

Colossyan Creator, our AI video generation tool, helps you quickly roll out gamified training programs equipped with interactivity features like knowledge checks at the end of each video learning module.

‍Give it a try for free today, or schedule a demo to learn more.