Expert Panel

Scientists have shown how the chemicals behind the brain’s pleasure system, endorphins, and dopamine, can improve motivation, prompt repetition, and enhance learning. Taking part in challenges or competing to win a skills badge, say, can improve employees’ retention, expand their knowledge, and promote cooperation across organisations – something more needed than ever in a remote working world.

David Semach, Partner and EMEA Head of Artificial Intelligence & Automation, at Infosys Consulting

With over 17 years of business and IT experience, David’s role sees him regularly collaborate with Fortune 500 companies on AI solutions that include business disruption, machine learning, Bots, cognitive and predictive capabilities, and RPA. He is an expert advisor on the challenges that come with AI roll-out in an organisation, and how to overcome these to achieve optimal return on investment.

An Coppens, Chief Game Changer at Gamification Nation

At award-winning agency Gamification Nation, An offers gamification and game design solutions to clients worldwide, including Adidas, Chuff, Google, Merck and Thomson Reuters. She is also CEO of My G-Nation and MyDigitalOffice.io involved in building a metaverse for work to help create a positive team culture for hybrid and remote teams. An has worked in L&D and change management roles for Modern Times Group, Xigma Management Consultants, Philips Electronics and Arthur Andersen Business Consulting.

“When you know what motivates and drives your team members, you can achieve change by appealing to what they desire or what can be shown as the desirable new vision,” An tells Business Chief. “To stimulate action towards said change is to provide the first tangible next step. You would then look at ways of nudging them towards what you want more of in terms of changed behaviour and rewarding some of these items when the effort to achieve them has been fulfilled.”

Gamification and personalised learning

Today’s workers have very different expectations. Described by David as being “more meandering than ever” the modern employee doesn’t fit the mould and expects more bespoke career paths than their predecessors.

“Because of this attitude shift, personalised training, learning and development journeys are an essential differentiator for employers right now,” David tells Business Chief. “Training in the future will be both mobile and personalised – these are inherently linked to AI and gamification technologies.”

Infosys Consulting uses its own proprietary digital tools to recreate the best of in-person learning, all of which are cloud-based and mobile-first so employees can access them anytime and anywhere.

“AI is vital to both virtualise and personalise L&D initiatives, moving away from the onesize-fits-all programmes in the past.”

David points to gamification as the missing piece to add to this AI-enabled training. “We are seeing increased investment in training platforms that learn your strengths, weaknesses, learning style and working preferences and adapt accordingly to create a truly enjoyable and engaging experience,” he says.

These insights can be used to automatically suggest suitable training courses and modules to a person’s role, as well as adapting the way individual training is delivered. “With these gamified applications, organisations have the ability to automate employee training programmes, saving significant time and costs in a difficult economic climate whilst