Why Gamify Learning?
Simple. Because It Works.
Humans are a curious species. I mean that both literally and figuratively! Humans have huge brain to body mass ratios. Just for comparison, a human brain is 1:40 times its body mass whereas a horse’s brain is 1:600 it’s size. Yes, we have a lot of brain power! This big brain coupled with relatively underdeveloped instincts in humans, means that humans learn almost everything about our world and our life itself, by being curious and experimenting.
“Humans are born as tiny amateur scientists. We learn almost everything from day-1 by experimenting ourselves.”
– Psychologist Jean Piguet
But, humans also get easily bored. Scientists studying human curiosity and learning habits show that humans are blessed with “perceptual curiosity”. That’s the curiosity we feel when something surprises us as totally new or when something doesn’t quite fit with what we thought we know. It ignites in us an itch to experiment and figure things out. And once we have figured it by doing it ourselves, we rarely forget that learning. This is why games are a perfect way to teach humans across age groups. Games ignite our perceptual curiosity and keep it growing since a game is ‘alive’. It changes and evolves every time it is played. So, it keeps us curious and challenges us, which helps us keep growing and learning without it getting repetitive or boring.
How to Gamify Corporate Learning
Huge Pros. Some Cons. A Study on What Works Best.
The process of gamification, i.e to use game design elements in non-game contexts, is increasingly being used by companies to gamify their products, processes, and jobs to motivate and engage employees. There is concrete data supporting such moves. However, like all devices that impact humans, this trend has had both positive and negative impacts on the learning and development of employees, and its good to study what to do when.
The Positives
One positive impact of gamification is that it can increase motivation and engagement among employees. When tasks are gamified, they become more enjoyable and engaging which can lead to increased participation and a drive to complete the task. This can be especially beneficial for tasks that are repetitive or mundane, as gamification can make them feel more like a game and less like work. Think of all entry level jobs in retail, construction, warehouses, transportation, and factories.
When employees feel more fulfilled in their jobs the give higher productivity. This increase in employee satisfaction has been proven multiple times, for example, a study published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies found that employees who participated in a gamified work environment reported 52% better job satisfaction compared to those in a non-gamified corporate environments.
Furthermore, many training platforms allow employees to earn rewards or points for completing certain tasks or learning new skills. This can create a sense of accomplishment and encourage employees to continue developing their skills. This can be especially useful in new and first-time workers, who are learning to adapt to their new work and a small incentive to keep improving their skills goes a long way to make them fully productive faster.
Game based learning can also be incorporated into case-study based group assignments. Rather than making the case study a download of learnings from a past experience, the case study can become alive by asking each team to come up with solutions to that situation and allowing it to play out in a simulated environment. This allows for an old case to be put into different contexts by different teams who add their cognitive diversity and experiences in coming up with novel solutions. These diverse perspectives would then aid everyone to learn from each other and make the learning much richer and be able to be applied in broader areas and stay with each person in a deeper and longer lasting way.
Game elements also help to learn the risk : reward trade offs in a safe and controlled environment. Teams can learn the impact of taking bold but risky approaches to a solution contrasted with tried and tested approaches that can be implemented at less cost and time. In a simulated game environment, the cost of failure of a bold but risky approach can be gauged alongside the potential upside of its success. All of this reduces the resources and cost for the company in a game versus when done in a real business situation. This makes it an ideal learning ground to foster innovation while balancing the need to deliver results.
The Watch Outs
Despite all the positive impacts that gamification can have in the workplace, there are also some potentially negative impacts of gamification. One concern is that it can create an unhealthy focus on competition and individual achievement. Scoreboards and Leaderboards, high paying incentives or company awards, visible “stars” vs “laggards” tagging of people can create a cutthroat environment where employees are more focused on winning against their coworkers than on collaborating and working together or through unethical means. This can lead to an unhealthy work culture and can discourage teamwork and collaboration. In some of the largest Global Investment Banks, employees were seen to deliver higher outcomes either by following unethical shortcuts or causing burn-outs amongst associates working 70+ hour work-weeks as a norm. Arresting this became a recent board room level debate in many Global Investment banks.
“A Game is a Map. Not the Actual Territory.
Gamify to foster learning. But not be the be-all-end all of it”
~ Anonymous
Has Anyone Gamified Learning ?
Yes. Across Industries. And Eras. Reaping big benefits.
Prussian Army’s Kriegspiel War Games
The German (Prussian) 19th century practice called “Kriegspiel” is the best modern example of game-based learning excellence. The Prussian military would not use any battle maneuver or operational tactic till it had implemented it during its “Kriegspiel” war games. If the maneuver did not work well during the Kriegspiel, they would go back to the drawing board to root cause why it failed and fix it. If it worked well, they would take that manuever to the next ‘stage’ and evolve a more complex scenario for the next Kriegspeil game trial. And on and on they built this, such that they became extremely sophisticated in tactical warfare. This led to the enormous clout of the Prussian military in Europe, despite other imperialistic European militaries, including the English, Spanish, Portugese having far more sophisticated weaponry and funds at their disposal. The Germans outmaneuvered their mightier 19th century neighbors simply by using gamified learning!
Worl’d Most Well Known 2-Minute Burger
In the Corporate world, the 20th century mega success of the company with the golden arches is often attributed to their early breakthrough on kitchen equipment layout, scientifically designed to engineer the best quality burger in the fastest time possible. While the machinery and layout was quite a hit in the 1st store, as it moved to a Franchise model, it realized that new franchises, and new associates didn’t always have the best time and motion to achieve the “perfect burger in 2-mins” goal. That’s when they gamified their on-the-job training (OJT) for all new associates. You got points for following exactly the time and motion during early OJT. And every 10 points earned you a badge. And every 3 badges earned you a special Sundae for 2.
A Legendary US Conglomerate’s Negotiation Skills Training
This story is from one of the most-admired US company, who in its hey days had some of the best and deepest corporate leadership bench strength. At one time 25-30% of US Fortune 100 companies were led by it’s alumni. Its famed Leadership Training center in Connecticut, US had a 5-day negotiation skills training program that would put participants in real-business scenarios and carry out role plays and simulated games, in teams and as individuals, to learn negotiation skills. Each negotiation tactic used by the different teams would then later be discussed and debated as a collective group with senior trainers and business leaders, then built into next session’s simulation. The negotiation goals were set not as profit maximization alone, but also creating win:win scenarios between different stakeholders. This gave a fun and balanced way to approach negotiation outcomes.
A Leading BPO and IT Company’s Wholistic Skill Development Approach
This leader in data-tech-AI consulting and business outsourcing company follows a 4-stage wholistic process to teach its 11 Key leadership skills and 45 domain skills, using gamification concepts such as picking real life situations or projects and playing them out as simulations. The 4-steps are called B.I.T.S and codified on its online learning platform.
B. Because – Define why you want to learn that skill and how we will demonstrate the level of skill you have achieved. I. Immerse – This is where you will go through the in-depth training on the skill T. Transform – Gurus n Master Gurus in the company designated for each skill help to translate the learnings from the training into real business scenarios. You also have brown-bag-chat forums with global peers at the same skill level to compare learnings. S. Solidify. You pick a real life project or business scenario to apply the learnt skill. And get tested by a panel on the successful demonstration of the skill in the live or simulated business situation.
Impact: This improved skill transference by 87% of those who began the training to those who got certified. It also made the whole journey more measurable and improved penetration of each skill across the different levels of employees by 46% Vs prior methods.
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