Let’s Play! Using Gamification for People Development

When we talk about people development, the major part is the learning and training program. We understand that learning and training is the must-to-do activity for individuals to grow and develop their capabilities. But if it isn’t delivered in the correct ways, it will leave participants unmotivated, unengaged, and uninspired.

Gamification has emerged as the popular technique to increase the fun of learning and training activities. Gamification also help to improve learning and training engagement.

In a survey by TalentLMS said when gamification elements are added to training, motivation climbs up to 83%, and boredom drops to just 10%. Even in the general situation, employees say gamification makes them feel more productive (89%) and happier (88%) at work. Gamification in the workplace has a significant impact on employee engagement, motivation, and psychology.

In general, gamification is the technique of making activities more game like, that apply the use of game elements in non-game activities. In training activities, gamification can used to encourage participants active by creating an environment where participants learn with the fun of playing games and being in friendly competition with other participants. Hence in the implementation, usually you can use points, badges, leaderboards, and prizes such as the normal competition.

Stay motivated in remote working situation

Now in the remote working situation, gamification play a more vital role to keep your team engaged, focused, and motivated.

Thanks to the technology advancement and higher internet penetration, people can work and learn everywhere, even play online games more than ever before. Therefore, gamification is a natural fit into the remote working world. It can make them more engaged and productive in a fun, easy, and accessible way.

I encourage my team to learn through Coursera, Hubspot Academy, LinkedIn Learning and also our internal online training platform. These online platform gives them a freedom to do self-learning and self-development which also gives stress-free learning process. And this self-learning activity is combined with gamification (and of course, prizes!) to motivate them to complete the course and keep engaged during the learning time.

Gamification elements

Here are a few of the gamification elements that we can used in learning activities:

1. Story Line. It provides guidance throughout the learning process and assist participants to stay focused during learning activities.
2. Levels or Badges. These give learning pathway to give direction what target to be reached in certain time. Levels also establish a personalized learning path in each participant as the training completion among participants can be vary.
3. Points. You can give points to participants after each assignment or once they have acquired a competency or skill in training session. Points will boost motivation and give a healthy competitive environment between participants.
4. Leaderboards. It encourages a clear competition that recognized among all participants. Leaderboards provide top scores and ranking to drive participants motivation for top position ranks.
5. Rewards. Finally, you need to offer rewards as recognition of impressive achievements. Giving rewards is without doubt one of the methods to motivate learning participants in spending time and effort for learning activities. Rewards may come in the form of money, e-voucher, gift card, tickets, management appreciation and other benefits.

Some researches and studies suggest that gamification of learning and training activities, including the use of levels, badges, points, leaderboards, and rewards, can be used to positively affect learning outcomes. By turning training activity into a more game-like experience, you can change a boring and unproductive learning process to more interesting and engaging learning.