5 steps to ensuring gamification is effective as a business

An Coppens, Chief Game Changer at Gamification Nation outlines her five tips for businesses considering introducing gamification

1. Understand the motivation of your target audience

2. Tailor the experience to their motivation so they feel happily inspired to talk action and engage

3. Make it memorable with good graphics, storylines and engaging characters they can relate to, learn from, and be inspired by

4. Make it inclusive. That may mean having to design multiple journeys to suit different experience levels and abilities

5. Don’t look at any one framework to solve all of your problems. Use what matters for your people actually improving employee engagement – which often falls victim when time or funds are of short supply.”

The future of gamification –AR, VR and the Metaverse

The application of AI to new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR) is moving gamification into the next level –leveraging the principles of gamification in real time, moving from training to learning by doing, and from one-size-fits-all to personalisation.

David says that while the use of VR and AR is already becoming prevalent in the education sector, “we are yet to see the same traction in corporate settings”.

One study predicts 14 million US employees will use AR glasses for on-thejob tasks and training by 2025, with some companies, like BMW, already deploying AR headsets in some of its factories for engine assembly training. While wearing them, employees are guided through all steps of the process and can reference visualisations to learn more about parts they are working with in real life.

5 Firms Using Gamification To Motivate Learning

How 5 companies have incorporated game-like elements into corporate learning programs to engage and motivate.

1.

Using storytelling as a gamified element to encourage participation, in 2011, Siemens launched an online game called Plantville featuring a character called Pete the Plant Manager. This online game, which has trained more than 23,000 engineering professionals, simulates the experience of being a plant manager, providing an innovative, educational and fun way to train employees on best practices for plant operations.

Often cited by experts as one of the most important elements of a gamified experience, leaderboards show participants how they rank amongst their peers. At Deloitte, after each completed activity, participants are able to view a list of the top 10 performers with the list resetting each week to encourage newcomers to compete.

4. IBM

The company’s Social Media Training Program includes a progression element, where participants move onto new levels upon completion. In the program, trainees can acquire three levels of certification – Specialist, Strategist, Master.

Earning badges which represent various learner achievements is another way of gamifying learning and one used by IBM. The firm’s digital badge program, which further incentivised learners by enabling them to instantly post their badges on social media, proved successful with 87% of participants saying they were more engaged because of it.

5. Walmart draw inspiration from, where people come together to give their skill and experience for a goal and the key is that they volunteer or opt in to doing so because they believe in the goal or cause.

The Big Four Firm uses leaderboards to help employees develop soft skills.

The retail giant has reportedly trained over a million of its associates using VR headsets as part of its VR employee training program and estimates that VR has returned “over a million full days of work” thanks to VR’s immersive experience reducing one-hour training to 10 minutes.

David tells Business Chief that these technologies have extensive applications for remotely upskilling employees, especially when combined with gamification. For example, developing presentation skills, something that’s an often unenjoyable process for staff standing in front of a room of colleagues, can now be achieved in a virtual and fun way.

“By populating virtual rooms with realistic elements like distractions and background audience noise, and gamifying the process of dealing with these correctly, employees can build these skills in a more enjoyable and engaging way. With AI, solutions like these can also give feedback on interpersonal elements like pace of voice, number of hesitation words and even eye contact,” he says.

An believes that the current developments around metaverses and digital workplaces will become part of how we work in the future.

“The big trend is toward self-organised autonomous teams as we see with the whole metaverse movement,” she says. “The metaverse itself is using game worlds or at least game technology to create experiences whether with avatars or with real people that is bringing us into an interesting place where more and more game companies are entering the business world.”

An also believes that whilst tech is driving some of the advancements, making the gamified interactions created to be more human in nature and more holistic towards the whole person at work will be vital.

Quoting world-renowned designer of alternate reality games Jane McGonigal, who

She points to the workings of decentralised teams as an example to READ THE FULL STORY