Can you justify a training investment in gamification? Absolutely. In fact, research is now available that shows gamification cannot only contribute to the overall effectiveness of employee training, but can lead to improvements in your overall organizational performance.
You can’t get business results if your employees don’t actively participate in training. If they don’t participate, they won’t gain the knowledge they need to do the job well. For many, getting employees to participate voluntarily in learning is their number one challenge: Employees are too busy, too distracted, or just not engaged.
That’s where gamification justifies itself. And the research proves it.
For the first time, there’s hard data that shows how specific game mechanics increase engagement and learning results, providing substantial evidence that it’s well worth the investment.
1. Game Play
While it might be tempting to dismiss game play as nothing more than hype, research shows it actually works. Karl Kapp pointed us to new research he completed recently that shows employees were significantly more motivated (51.6 percent) to return and engage with a microlearning platform when they could play a game. Getting employees to participate in learning is the first hurdle organizations need overcome when it comes to training, so this result is nothing to sneeze at. And, if you think about it, the results just makes sense. Today’s employees work in a high-speed, frantic environment, so they appreciate the break that a fun game can provide.
Besides increasing participation, game play can also help boost the learning itself. When employees play games, it can place them in a state of “flow”, which means they are fully immersed and focused in what they are doing in. This allows employees to concentrate more fully on questions that appear while they’re playing the game and, according to Kapp’s research, they answer significantly more questions correctly as a result.
2. Rewards
While some argue rewards have a temporary impact on engagement, our research suggests the contrary. There’s no doubt that employees are drawn to rewards, and will participate in more learning sessions to achieve them. Based on a three-year analysis of more than 9.5 million sessions on the Axonify microlearning platform, employees who visited the rewards section 75 to 100 percent of the time (when they logged in), completed almost three times as many learning sessions (see Figure 1 below). On the flip side, the less frequently employees checked their rewards page, the fewer learning sessions they completed. It’s clear that when rewards are attractive to employees, they participate more frequently and complete more of their learning.
Kapp’s research also aligns with our findings. He found that interest in tangible rewards resulted in significantly higher participation and significantly better performance for learning material during the 3.5 years employees were using the microlearning platform. This means, tangible rewards can be an effective incentive for motivating employees to participate in corporate learning as well as improving performance.
3. Leaderboards
Just as games and rewards are primary motivators for participation and engagement, leaderboards have the same effect. Kapp’s recent research indicates employees who engaged with the leaderboard more often on a microlearning platform had significantly higher training participation rates. And, here’s something interesting, females seemed to be even more engaged with the leaderboards than their male counterparts.
4. Game Mechanics in Combination
While game mechanics drive results on their own, they often have even more power when used in combination. Based on data extrapolated from 2.5 million interactions with six different game mechanics on the Axonify microlearning platform, there’s a strong correlation to how often employees participate in learning. In Figure 2 (below), the data shows that all six of these game mechanics have a high correlation to participation. That means, employees who interact with these game mechanics more often have higher participation frequency on the platform. Similarly, those who participate more frequently on the platform interact with these game mechanics the most often.
Figure 2: Game mechanics correlation coefficient.
(The closer the correlation coefficient gets to 1.0, more closely the two variables – the game mechanic and learning participation – are related. Anything above .3 is considered statistically significant).
Improved knowledge leads to improved job performance
The research speaks for itself. Gamification drives participation in learning, which results in higher levels of knowledge. When your employees are more knowledgeable, they perform on the job the way you need them to: They make the right choices, take the proper actions and exercise good judgement. And this is how you impact job performance, and ultimately bottom line performance.
