Top 10 Ways to Gamify Your Company

Gamified training has so many benefits. It can turn dry material into a fun, motivational, interactive, and engaging experience for employees. According to recent statistics, 83% of employees who underwent gamified training were more motivated to work.

Gamification makes the learning process more exciting and competitive. When a company adds gamification elements to training, knowledge retention can increase by 30%, especially when a text-based or oral presentation uses infographics, images, or other forms of visuals. 

But, to fully use the benefits, you must use the most effective strategies to implement gamification during the training sessions. The tips below can help.

What Is Gamification in Business?

Gamification in Business: An Innovative Engagement Strategy

Gamification in the business context transforms conventional activities into engaging, game-like experiences by integrating core game mechanics into non-gaming environments such as corporate websites, online communities, learning management systems, and business intranets.

At its core, business gamification leverages elements like points, levels, badges, leaderboards, and challenges to create a dynamic environment that encourages interaction, collaboration, and competition. The ultimate objective is to cultivate a motivated community that is actively involved in achieving shared goals, enhancing productivity, fostering a sense of accomplishment, and driving meaningful interactions.

Through gamification, businesses can transform mundane tasks into exciting challenges, making the process of reaching objectives enjoyable and rewarding. This approach not only improves engagement rates but also reinforces positive behaviors, aligns individual actions with organizational goals, and builds a vibrant, collaborative culture. In doing so, gamification in business serves as a powerful tool to inspire, motivate, and unite people towards common aspirations, transforming the way organizations connect with their audience and achieve success.

You can modify existing training programs into a more game-like setting. You can also add structural elements, like leaderboards and digital badges, to boost employee engagement. Businesses often add gamification to training courses, employee recruitment, and evaluation. 

Some examples of game mechanics used in corporate training programs can include the following.

• Goals

Completing tasks gives employees rewards, such as points or badges. 

• Status

Employees work on increasing their rank or level through a series of activities.

• Community

Team challenges inspire employees to work together.

• Education

Tricks, tips, and quizzes are given to employees during the training process.

It’s important to emphasize that the point of gamification isn’t to turn work into a game. But to mix different game mechanics with professional tasks. This can help make the training more exciting, engaging, and motivational.

How Is Gamification Different Than Traditional Training?

Traditional learning has a fixed structure, such as technical skill training, briefings, one-on-one discussions, etc. Gamification training inspires workers to think outside the box and recall and retain information faster. 

Instead of following dull-lecture-style traditional training, gamification creates an interactive learning experience. Gaming mechanics like collaborative problem-solving tasks and competitive challenges inspire workers to enhance their creativity and innovation.

Does Gamified Training Work?

According to 2022 reports, 95% of employees like using game mechanics. For around 72% of employees, gamified elements inspire them to work harder. Regarding productivity, about 90% of employees felt that using gamification made them feel more productive. 

Other studies also support the use of a well-designed gamification strategy. According to experts, gamification is a promising tool for increasing employee productivity, loyalty, and well-being in the workplace. This unique approach can increase engagement and motivation. In fact, gamification training could be more beneficial than old training programs. 

Gamification in Business: A Transformative Strategy

Gamification leverages the compelling essence of gaming—its mechanics, dynamics, and emotional engagements—translating them into a non-game context to revolutionize engagement and participation. This innovative strategy incorporates typical gaming elements like point scoring, leaderboards, rewards systems, and healthy competition into business environments. The objective? To transform mundane tasks into exciting challenges, motivate continuous participation, and foster a collaborative and competitive spirit among employees and customers alike.

How Gamification Empowers Businesses

By embedding game elements into business processes, learning management systems, websites, and internal platforms, gamification does more than just intrigue; it motivates. It turns every action into a step towards a larger goal, making progress visible and rewards tangible. This approach taps into fundamental human desires for achievement, recognition, and collaboration, driving individuals to engage more deeply with their tasks, peers, and the overarching business goals.

The Multifaceted Benefits of Gamification

• Increased Engagement: Gamification transforms passive participants into active contributors, enhancing their engagement with the business.
• Enhanced Learning and Development: Through challenges and rewards, employees are motivated to acquire new skills and knowledge, promoting continuous personal and professional development.
• Boosted Productivity: Gamified elements make goals clear, track progress, and provide feedback, leading to increased productivity and performance.
• Data-Driven Insights: Each interaction provides valuable data, offering insights into user behavior, preferences, and areas for improvement.
• Cultural Transformation: Gamification fosters a culture of transparency, recognition, and collaboration, enhancing overall workplace morale and company culture.

Elevating Gamification Strategy

For gamification to truly succeed, it must be more than just fun and games. It requires a strategic approach that aligns with business objectives, resonates with your audience’s intrinsic motivators such as autonomy, mastery, purpose, and social interaction, and is supported by a platform capable of capturing and leveraging the right data to drive continuous improvement.

In essence, gamification in business is not just about adding game elements to non-game environments. It’s about creating a dynamic ecosystem where every interaction matters, every achievement is recognized, and every participant is motivated to strive for excellence, thereby driving business growth and innovation.

Top 10 Ways to Gamify Your Company’s Training

People want to feel capable, competent, and confident in their work. This can help improve the company culture, learner performance, and results. Using gamification in corporate training can help achieve exactly that.

But, to create the perfect training environment, it is essential to give learners some control over the outcome and training process.

Remember, gamification is not a way to micromanage the training environment and control employees. But to offer them some autonomy to inspire and motivate people.

• Gamification of training offers a creative strategy to innovate your training course.

You can also use gamification to change the pace without disrupting your workflow. Here is how to add gamification in corporate training. You can also find some helpful gamification examples below.

1. Develop Training Games 

Formal training experiences take on a traditional classroom approach. This lacks flexibility, engagement, and individual options for employees. So, learners often end up with knowledge gaps.

A training program that uses games offers better options for boosting persistence and creativity. 

Training games focus on habit and mastery building. They encourage learners to retake the course until they master the content.

Domino’s Pizza – the number one company in the world, added a gamified learning system to boost learning outcomes.

Their gamification training strategy, known as the Pizza Maker course, uses simulations to reward, asses, and engage employees during the training program. The goal is to teach new employees how to add the right amount of toppings on different types of pizzas.

Including learning every item on the restaurant’s menu. Employees earn scores and strive to improve their past scores by completing tasks.

Gamification helped new employees make pizzas faster and master the menu sooner. An option such as this can decrease the existing onboarding process.

2. Change the Format of Complex Training Sessions

Learning complex concepts is often difficult for new employees. Especially when there is a diverse employee base with different skills and needs, when you integrate gamification, you can break complex sessions into sub-training sessions. 

You can then use gamification tools and interactive visuals to deliver the content. This makes the training environment easier to understand. In corporate training, workers must complete one section of the training before they can advance to the next one. 

After completing all the training sections, they can achieve the desired goal. Gamified training often comes with points. These points can help evaluate the learner’s training results. For the learner, receiving these points can feel motivational and rewarding.

3. Use Progress Through Levels 

Gamification can help employees see their progress over time. In corporate training, it can help recognize employee achievements for their hard work. One of the simplest ways to achieve that is to use a leveling system.

Leveling gives learners:

• A sense of progression
• The ability for personal growth
• A better flow of training programs

These types of game mechanics can be useful for employees with short attention spans. Some gamification examples in training through levels is Cisco’s Social Media Training Program. Learners completing the training program can earn three levels of certification. Such as “Specialist,” “Strategist,” and “Master.” 

Cisco also added four sub-certification levels for sales, HR, internal partner teams, and external communication. To get to the next level, trainees must finish a set number of courses. This leveling system promotes learner progress. 

4. Add a Scoring System 

A scoring system is one of the most popular game mechanics. It serves as a benchmark for further development. In corporate training, trainees can collect points for reaching a milestone or giving correct answers as they progress through the programs. 

The further they progress, the more points they collect. What makes scoring systems versatile in a corporate environment is that you can use them outside your internal social network. 

You can engage trainees outside work and allow them to get points for sharing reports. As well as publishing blog posts and posting comments. Combining gamification with social media is an excellent way of boosting community engagement.

5. Have Leaderboards 

The leaderboard is another popular example of gamification in training. It is an excellent sales training and team-building tool. With a gamification leaderboard, businesses can improve performance and culture. It is also useful for getting everyone involved, even those working from home.

Leaderboards in training programs can display the ranking of trainees and keep track of their goals. Some leaderboards have detailed timelines of when the trainee accomplished a certain task. The ranking algorithm can help determine the highest score among other members. 

With rankings such as these, corporate training can foster a competitive spirit and improve the sales process. Although the primary goal of leaderboards is to stimulate individual effort, they can also help with team building. 

Here are some gamification examples in training. You can sort and pair up your sales reps into groups based on different criteria. You can then give them a project they can work on together.

Offering rewards and incentives is an excellent idea to help leverage the leaderboards for team building.

Deloitte, a renowned management and consulting company added a leadership training curriculum for senior executives. But, they couldn’t motivate them to start or finish the program. To solve the problem, Deloitte introduced gamified elements to the leadership training process. 

The company included status symbols, leaderboards, and badges. In just three months after implementing gamification, the time to complete the program was reduced by 50%. Plus, there was almost a 47% spike in the number of users returning to the site daily.

6. Add Role-Playing Games

A prevalent method of gamification in training is borrowing elements of traditional role-playing and adding them to a game setting. Employees can select an avatar and practice different customer scenarios in a fun and fictional environment.

Through role-playing, people can:

• Develop creative problem-solving skills
• Handle difficult situations
• Understand the customer’s perspective
• Decrease the risk of errors in real-life

Role-playing prepares trainees for real-life situations. They also get instant feedback on their performance. Since they will face these scenarios for the first time, they can feel safer practicing in a fictional environment. 

The scenario can highlight their skill levels, reactions, and how they handle real-life situations.

Gamification in training helps remove the hypothetical nature of training and creates better scenarios for employers to gather data on the trainee’s strengths and weaknesses.

7. Provide Feedback During the Entire Course

Traditional training courses provide feedback at the end of the course. Gamification in training can change this. Trainees can receive feedback throughout the entire training program. This can help make sure that people learn simpler concepts before they move on to complex topics. 

• Timely and constructive feedback improves self-reflection. It also encourages better knowledge retention. 

Feedback can come from points, badges, prizes, tiers, progress bars, etc. Progress bars make it easy to visualize where people stand. Points offer several evaluations of specific actions, while tiers or badges demonstrate their achievements and contribution. 

Through regular feedback, you can also improve the learning design and experience for trainees. You can improve the course and make it easier for new employees to reach business objectives.

8. Enhance Corporate Training With Virtual Reality Simulations

Virtual reality can take your training module to a new level. Virtual simulations are lifelike, so it helps create practical training for different complex skills. VR headsets provide an audio-visual experience, which can also come with physical tools and sensors to create a whole-body training experience. 

• Companies can use different ways to gamify VR training. Such as having an in-house video-game training program with avatars for every employee. You can also adopt a points and reward system.

This type of gamification in training can be useful for risky training. For example, when training electricians, race car drivers, plumbers, workers in the construction industry, etc., VR can be a valuable tool for practicing emergencies. 

Trainees can use VR to prepare for robberies and fires, depending on your company. Employees can also use VR to boost customer satisfaction. VR settings help teach soft skills. It offers complex virtual interactions with tricky and demanding customers.  

• Since some trainees need more time to hone their soft skills, they can practice with virtual customers instead of working with real ones. This creates a unique learning path for boosting self-confidence. 

VR training also enhances memory retention. Many studies show that repetition helps improve memory. Combining multiple stimuli in a virtual space allows people to create their own virtual experience. This helps convert both recall and recognition of the events into long-term memory.

The VR setting makes it easier for people to ingest information as if they are experiencing it in real time. Repeating different scenarios and events in corporate training makes it easier to remember them.

9. Try Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) training adds digital elements to live real-world environments through devices. Such as a phone or a tablet. There are different types of AR experiences. The first one is AR target recognition.

AR target image recognition is where you can overlay a 2D object with any 3D object on top of it. If you scan a QR code, for example, you can put a 3D object on top of that code. You can study the object, move it, and analyze it from different angles.

The second one is AR ground plane technology. This is when you can take a 3D object and place it on a flat surface. You can take a 3D model of any furniture and put it in the office. You can rotate it and study different parts of the training. 

The third AR experience is AR scenario training. You can use it to practice with a POS system, operating rooms, or anything else that might be related to your company.

AR in corporate training can be useful for the following processes.

• Onboarding

AR gamification in training offers new hires a more engaging onboarding process. Mainly through 3D models, hands-on interactions, and videos. This type of digital learning offers consistent onboarding materials. 

• Improving technical skills

AR helps recreate the exact working environment. It helps overcome cognitive barriers and facilitates the acquisition of knowledge. 

• Product knowledge training

You can use AR to put products in front of new hires without actually having to place the products there. This can help familiarize new workers with all the different components, how they work, etc.

• Multi-step tasks

AR is great for maintenance and repair. Workers can work with different virtual options, outline the steps to fix them and work through a specific problem.

10. Host Periodic Contests

Another way to use gamification in training is to host periodic contests. You can tailor the contest to fit the training initiative and inspire individual or collaborative efforts. Contests are a popular gamification method because they incentivize new hires. 

Contests can gamify processes like customer service, quality assurance, and sales. With an option such as this, you can:

• Increase employee innovation
• Spike motivation
• Encourage the development of new skills and interests
• Enhance productivity
• Strengthen the bond between workers

When implementing contests, start by identifying business objectives. The game should help the company achieve a particular goal.

For example, you can use a 30-day challenge. If you are planning to release a new product, make a contest of who would come up with the most unique ideas for new products.

Here is another example. Your company works with tourists from different parts of the world. And you want to create a language learning contest. You can reward workers for learning important phrases in a new language. This can be useful for customer service teams as well.

If you want to boost morale, do online office games or photo contests. Employees can submit their photos for a chance to win a prize.  

Are you ready to level up?

Gamification for corporate training has a lot to offer. This strategy can help improve the retention of knowledge and learning engagement. The goal of gamification is to tap into the worker’s natural desire to compete by adding game-like elements to training programs. 

This strategy allows companies to use attractive game-like features, like rewards and leaderboards, to help new hires remain interested and improve their problem-solving skills. The good thing is gamification uses a range of game mechanics, like progress bars, levels, and achievements.

This gives you plenty of options to work with and creates different challenges. If you are looking for a way to include gamification in your business, Spinify can help.

As a leader in sales gamification, we can give your team the tools they need to succeed. We can gamify your contests and goals to create a fun experience and boost staff motivation.Our award-winning software helps you easily reach your targets and increase sales and productivity. The interface is very easy to use and ideal for first-time users. Book a demo today and see how Spinify can help level up your team’s performance!