How gamification is transforming training

When Leon UK man­ag­ing direc­tor Shereen Ritchie start­ed her first hos­pi­tal­i­ty job in the 1990s, train­ing con­sist­ed of read­ing a “100-page doc­u­ment, sat in the smok­ing sec­tion with a milk­shake for about four hours”. 

“You’d lose the will to live,” she jokes but, on a seri­ous note, recalls engage­ment and reten­tion being low. It is a world away from now, when she is wok­en at 3am to the sound of her phone ping­ing with noti­fi­ca­tions of employ­ees all over the coun­try ris­ing up the leader­board of Leon’s new gam­i­fied learn­ing plat­form. 

“Hon­est­ly, it got real: peo­ple were chal­leng­ing each oth­er and want­i­ng to get more points. It’s cre­at­ed such a buzz. I’ve nev­er had health and safe­ty train­ing com­plet­ed so quick­ly,” she quips.  

Work­ing with gam­i­fied solu­tions provider Atten­si, the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic was an ide­al time to rede­fine the train­ing expe­ri­ence for the Leon UK team across 59 branch­es. Some 94 per cent of staff have now under­tak­en the gam­i­fied train­ing, tak­ing part in sim­u­la­tions set in a 3D repli­ca of a Leon restau­rant with authen­tic dia­logue and char­ac­ters. Some 91 per cent report it has helped them bet­ter under­stand com­pa­ny val­ues.

Leon can now update and pub­lish its own con­tent on the Atten­si plat­form, which is built on the same game engine Xbox and PlaySta­tion game design­ers use. And Richie is ben­e­fit­ing from a more data-dri­ven approach to both staff and busi­ness devel­op­ment.

“Evo­lu­tion in train­ing was need­ed before the virus, but when the pan­dem­ic hit you had three options when it came to learn­ing and devel­op­ment: you stopped doing any, you tried to adapt your cur­rent process­es as best you could and hope they worked or you took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to evolve and grow,” she says.

“We have a train­ing school in our head office, which is amaz­ing but not scal­able. I’m not say­ing gam­i­fied train­ing is the only train­ing tool we’ll use; there will always be a place for face-to-face and some doc­u­men­ta­tion. But it’s about how peo­ple retain infor­ma­tion by learn­ing in a gam­i­fied way.”

Gam­i­fi­ca­tion is also gain­ing trac­tion in the insur­ance sec­tor. Atten­si this year announced the world’s first under­writer sim­u­la­tor for insur­er His­cox, a cus­tom-built 3D sim­u­la­tion chal­leng­ing under­writ­ers to com­pete in a num­ber of real­is­tic, gam­i­fied sce­nar­ios.

By the end of 2021, more than 90 per cent of the firm’s junior under­writ­ers will have done the train­ing. Around 85 per cent of the par­tic­i­pants say it has helped them under­stand how to apply tech­ni­cal con­cepts across the under­writ­ing cycle, free­ing up senior team mem­bers to pro­vide sup­port for more com­plex tasks, such as assess­ing risk. Like at Leon, the com­pet­i­tive ele­ment has been a hit, with peo­ple repeat­ing a sim­u­la­tion up to 30 times to top the leader­board.

Des Bish­op, group head of peo­ple devel­op­ment at His­cox, describes the shift as a” game-chang­er” against one of the sector’s key chal­lenges, which is a short­age of high-qual­i­ty tech­ni­cal under­writ­ers.

“Under­writ­ing dri­ves prof­it, so our busi­ness needs an excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed team of tech­ni­cal under­writ­ers. Our sim­u­la­tion allows team mem­bers to expe­ri­ence the results of their actions in a safe envi­ron­ment. It pro­vides insights that face-to-face and elearn­ing exer­cis­es can’t match,” says Bish­op.

Putting purpose over platform

Yet there are senior learn­ing and devel­op­ment pro­fes­sion­als who warn gam­i­fi­ca­tion should be used care­ful­ly, espe­cial­ly when tack­ling com­plex sub­jects like lead­er­ship as well as diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, which may need a more spe­cial­ist, tai­lored approach. 

“We’ve seen a back­lash in the past cou­ple of years from peo­ple get­ting excit­ed about gam­i­fi­ca­tion, but with­out think­ing about the pur­pose. For manda­to­ry train­ing, it can spice up a dull sub­ject mat­ter. But we have to make sure gam­i­fi­ca­tion adds val­ue for learn­ers, rather just being a gim­mick. This is espe­cial­ly true for senior lead­ers who may be more scep­ti­cal,” says Julia Tier­ney, chief exec­u­tive of peer learn­ing plat­form Hive Learn­ing.

Pur­pose is cer­tain­ly more impor­tant than plat­form for finance firm Legal and Gen­er­al, which last year under­took a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of its entire learn­ing offer­ing. While explor­ing the use of gam­i­fi­ca­tion, the company’s head of peo­ple devel­op­ment for expe­ri­ences and inno­va­tion Gem­ma Pater­son is cau­tious not to “intro­duce tech for the sake of tech”.

“Peo­ple are deal­ing with so much change already. We have to only do what’s going to be help­ful. It’s about how we under­stand the chal­lenges peo­ple are up against, then give them exact­ly what they need in a for­mat that’s going to work for them,” she says.

And as Legal and Gen­er­al group peo­ple devel­op­ment direc­tor Tanya Bagchi adds, it’s about mak­ing mean­ing and con­nec­tion part of the roll­out process. “If we can help peo­ple see how tech­nol­o­gy can make their lives eas­i­er, not as anoth­er sys­tem to learn, then we can con­nect peo­ple more mean­ing­ful­ly and fre­quent­ly, giv­ing them a bet­ter chance of col­lab­o­rat­ing and work­ing in agile ways,” she says.

Applying gamification to leadership and diversity

Yet Leon’s Ritchie sees the val­ue of gam­i­fi­ca­tion in areas like lead­er­ship and diver­si­ty, and is con­sid­er­ing how it can be applied to indi­vid­ual team mem­ber devel­op­ment and appraisals. 

This does require a dif­fer­ent approach from prac­ti­cal skills build­ing, adds Attensi’s busi­ness devel­op­ment direc­tor Greg Hull, switch­ing the focus from points and high scores to met­rics like trust.

“We work with pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and con­sul­tan­cy firms around man­age­ment and lead­er­ship train­ing. We’re able to put peo­ple into sit­u­a­tions that are famil­iar and build con­fi­dence. Espe­cial­ly when you pro­mote some­body from with­in, it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean they imme­di­ate­ly have the skills to sud­den­ly take on lead­er­ship. We do a lot of this type of train­ing, in terms of soft skills, around team inter­ac­tions and peer-to-peer man­age­ment,” Hull explains.

While Ritchie now sees pre­vi­ous train­ing styles as “old hat” and gam­i­fi­ca­tion “the way of the future”, Hull’s final piece of advice is to pre­pare teams ade­quate­ly for a new way of learn­ing. “If you can do that, then when you imple­ment some­thing you are 70 per cent of the way there in terms of it real­ly land­ing,” he rec­om­mends.