As the pandemic continues to ravage the world, people are becoming more and more virtual. While going virtual offers many advantages, one thing is that it produces a great learning gap due to effective engagement.
This is particularly true for many corporate organizations. Also, due to remote working, companies lose some of the perks with in-house corporate training like easy onboarding and generally lower the need for supervision.
Engagement is important in any learning as it is what drives the value and final outcome of learning. Gamification, meaning incorporating game mechanics in non-gaming situations, has been touted as one of the best ways of improving engagement and making the experience enjoyable.
In this article, let us discuss how Gamified coaching can fill the corporate learning gap. But before delving into it, let us first discuss Gamification itself!
Table of Contents
What is Gamification, and what does it involve?
As seen earlier, Gamification involves some game mechanisms in a situation that is generally not a game environment. There are basically two fundamental components that need to be considered for Gamification: Game mechanics and Player actions.
The Game mechanics refer to the general design of the game. That is, how different “levels” are structured, how progression is done, how points are awarded, how feedback is provided and more. The player behaviour is the set of actions that the player takes to advance in the game.
The Game design includes both the mechanics’ design and player actions too. So now that you know some things about Gamification, let us discuss the 5 ways in which Gamification can help:
Improved Engagement and Retention:
With Game mechanics incorporated and the fact that people generally want to score high and compete in leaderboards along with structured progression, on a while, Gamification creates more engagement and ensures people willingly spend time. As people learn the material effectively, there is a good chance for higher retention.
Effective tracking of behaviour:
Gamification involves having an effective structure and established method of progression in learning. So as these structures are in place, it becomes way easier to track and understand the behaviour of individuals.
This tracking need not be static but real-time and highly flexible. All of this would, in turn, help you to improve the learning experience and close the gap further.
Incentivize learning and accelerate it:
Proper tracking helps you in giving efficient incentives, and rewards for the “hard work” people do in learning the subject. These incentives and rewards will further motivate people to take up more courses and accelerate their learning.
Improved Knowledge sharing and social learning:
Many game mechanics include social elements to accelerate collaboration between people and create knowledge sharing between people. Incorporating social elements in games can help flourish the informal learning experience from peers that people might miss due to working from home.
Create a virtuous learning cycle:
When learners engage themselves in learning, they will connect to the learning culture and get closer to the company. This positively reinforces learning again, and thus, we have a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement and a sense of belonging and attachment to the culture.
Shortcomings of Gamification:
Gamification is not a silver bullet for improving learning or any activity in an organization. Like everything, Gamification has its advantages and shortcomings. Some of the shortcomings are:
Wrong steps can be counterproductive:
Gamification needs to be deployed very carefully, considering all of the employee’s needs and ways. If deployed poorly, gamified experiences can be seen as inappropriate and unnecessary.
Overusing Gamification can be bad:
When you overuse game mechanics, then the learner might lose their focus all of their effort in getting higher points, hitting the top on the leaderboard than the actual learning, which leads them away from the original mission. So, having just the right amount of game mechanics is important.
Cannot solve fundamental problems:
Gamification can help in better engagement, but it cannot help other problems that stem from the fundamental low quality of the learning environment or learning content. That is, if the learning material itself is poor and is non-relevant to the people, Gamification cannot help much in accelerating their learning.
So, with a good incorporation of Gamified Coaching, corporates can easily fill the learning gap created by remote work and create a strong learning culture.
