Learn to play the game

Juliette Denny explains the benefits of using gaming techniques to improve your learning system, engage your teams and create real ROI

Securing return on investment (ROI) is an essential, but often seemingly unachievable, goal of a learning and development strategy. For many involved in the strategy, the learning management system (LMS) is key. If your LMS doesn’t inspire or encourage participation, it simply won’t be used.

Apply the principles of gaming (“gamification”) to your LMS Game on and you can overcome its Deloitte gamified its training pitfalls, developing a system that programmes and found that learners engages its users and encourages took 50% less time to complete a culture of empowerment. their training. Long-term learner engagement was Is yOuR LMs GIvING ROI? massively improved

Today, when every action and investment counts, it is important that your LMS is giving you value for money. And remember, ROI doesn’t simply refer to financial investment – it’s also time, effort, resources, accountability and support.

How hard is it to get your LMS off the ground, and how easy is it to get your employees to use it? Is top tier management behind the project? The LMS requires buy-in from all levels of an organisation.

If you’re struggling with your LMS roll-out and seeking employee engagement, start with Donald Kirkpatrick’s four levels of training evaluation: reaction, learning, behaviour and results.

REACTION: Are learners eager to log on? How often – if at all – do they return? Do they enjoy time online, exploring, completing modules and taking assessments? Ideally, the LMS should be a self-service platform for learners to interact without you having to push them.

Invite learners to complete employee reaction surveys directly on the LMS.

LEARNING: What do you want the LMS to do? Change behaviours? Change attitudes? Upskill the

workforce? Increase sales? Reduce induction times Such techniques might work well in for new staff? Reduce employee attrition? the short term, but how much is

Whatever elements you monitor, measure them actually learnt? Will employees before and after training on your LMS to compare the pre- and post-learning knowledge. Remember that evaluation doesn’t stop when the learner Game on Ford Canada gamified its LMS and found a huge increase who just log on the requisite number of times make enough effort to embed their knowledge finishes the learning. Assess their knowledge in actions per user of 100% and give your L&D programme retention a few weeks or months later to see if the within five weeks sufficient ROI? LMS roll-out was truly successful. A way to secure engagement that BEHAvIOuR: You can only know whether you’ve gaming techniques, making learning been successful in changing behaviour if you more enjoyable and fun. Gamification gets monitor learners over the course of a few months. learners logging on, learning more, remembering Consider these questions: more and changing their behaviours for the better. l Did learners put any of their training to use? praise or monetary reward, for example, the first has longer-term impact is through l Can they teach others their new skills? yOuR EMpLOyEEs –l Are they aware they’re acting differently? dONkEys OR GAMERs? Knowledge retention is key. Learners may Donkeys may respond well to the carrot and stick behave in the desired ways immediately technique, but humans have an intrinsic desire to following training, but as soon as knowledge play games, compete and achieve. With the starts to fade, so will the behaviours. smartphone opening up a world of gaming, the need for L&D to tap into this exciting REsuLTs: Has the training programme new world is paramount. With a gamified produced the desired outcome for your business in LMS, you can award learners with badges terms of productivity, employee retention, morale, for exploring and interacting with it, points for quality and customer satisfaction? completing e-learning modules and achievements

The factor that makes the most difference is for completing entire development streams. Gamification allows you to tap into your “one learner’s sales rose by an average of employees’ innate competitive nature: a leaderboard on your LMS will display all your 678% across six different customer accounts after undergoing training on a gamified LmS” learners and how they are faring in comparison with each other. That can give them the extra motivation they need to spend more time logged on and consuming training content in order to “level up” and reach the top of the leaderboard. engagement. Learners need to engage with the Applying gaming principles in this way can have software and e-learning content so they can enjoy a drastic impact on each level of the training using the LMS, learn more, change behaviours for evaluation process, and therefore your ROI. good and ultimately produce the results you need. A gamified LMS will also help embed the

Employee engagement in learning terms means learning content more deeply by utilising that learners are committed to their training knowledge application questions, as opposed to programme and appreciate its importance to their knowledge recall. Such questions have been work life and career progression. In the context of proven to help cement information in learners’ the LMS the learner will be eager to log on, minds by making them think laterally and apply explore, consume all content available to them and their learning to actual situations. even encourage colleagues to do the same. Socialisation, community and social learning all GAME ON – HOw TO sECuRE awarded for social behaviours, perhaps sharing an ENGAGEMENT ON yOuR LMs achievement via LinkedIn or commenting on a There are tactics you can use to get your fellow learner’s activity on the LMS. A Facebookemployees logging on and not tuning out. style dialogue stream and forum discussion boards

You can offer a combination of carrot (reward) will further demonstrate how your learners can and stick (punishment) to induce desired share their knowledge, increase their skills, provide behaviours. The carrot for your LMS could be advice and guidance, and work as a cohesive unit. benefit from a gamified LMS. Badges can be five employees who log on ten times in one month Juliette Denny is MAkE A GAME pLAN get a bonus or a gift voucher. Conversely, the stick managing director of online If it is not being used, your LMS is worth could be that those who don’t complete certain learning management expert Growth Engineering. Visit absolutely nothing to you, your learners or your e-learning modules will face disciplinary action. www.growthengineering.co.uk organisation. Gamification offers the solution.