Gamification in the Workplace: How to Make Learning Fun and Effective

01 March 2023

Do your employees enjoy sitting through hours of online training? Do they leap for joy over boring 'team building' that takes place in the 'boredroom'?

Give gamified training and learning a chance!

Gamified training is a type of interactive learning that uses game-based elements, ie points, challenges, leaderboards, etc., to motivate employees to acquire knowledge and skills related to business operations and processes.

Basically it takes a boring but important process and injects fun and excitement. Not only does this put a smile on employee faces, it also drives home the education by making the experience memorable.

Engaging employees in the process of learning through scoring, rewards, levels, competition and collaboration motivates employees while teaching them essential business skills.

Gamified learning takes place frequently outside the office. Remember the Spelling Bee and Geography Bee in school? These competitions are easy and fun ways to get students excited about learning.

Have you used an app or website that tracks your workouts or water intake? If so, you know they regularly award participators with points, medals and levels to encourage healthy decisions. Exercise bikes have scheduled races where individuals can participate in competition from their own home or gym resulting in a better workout. All parts of our lives have been gamified through apps that help individuals focus, increase their credit score, learn a new language, and more.

What benefits have been found from gamified training?

Motivated and engaged employees
Easier workplace assimilation for new employees
Increased collaboration and teamwork
Strengthens social bonds between employees
Greater chance of long term knowledge retention
Improved performance and productivity
Ability to measure progress through defined learning objectives

At On Purpose Adventures, we take company concerns, like communication, collaboration, teamwork and leadership, and gamify the team building process by creating puzzles that can be solved and challenges that can be won.

In this way, we engage employees, we motivate them with prizes or first place titles, and along the way we provide plenty of learning opportunities.

Another organization making a splash in gamification is Kudos®. They offer a solution for gamified recognition in the workplace. By allowing employees to recognize their co-workers' achievements in a fun and engaging way, organizations are able to strengthen culture and boost engagement.

Many top performers thrive in a competitive environment. But competition in the workplace can also become toxic. So remove your teams from the office environment, create a competitive atmosphere that is unrelated to the current business project, and allow your teams to compete. Creating a positive experience while they are under pressure in a competitive gamified team building environment can carry over back in the office.

A mediocre crew can become a highly motivated squad that blows expectations out of the water through gamified learning!

I am so excited about gamified training that my wife and I attended a 3 day workshop in Lisbon, Portugal at the end of last year for our gamification platform app. Somehow, we are the biggest users of the app in the US and that gets us an invite to these sessions.