Games and Gamification Make Sense in Corporate Environments

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Introduction

Learning games for corporations is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the legendary MIT Beer Distribution Game used to teach students and executives about the impact of poor communication and panic ordering within a system has been played in one form or another since the late 1950s. One of the first corporate learning games ever was created in the 1930's in Russia. No, the use of games to teach employees within a corporate environment is not new at all.

What is new is the concept and application of gamification and the sudden proliferation of all types of digital learning games introduced within corporations. The sudden and seemingly relentless introduction of all sorts of learning games and gamification leads to the inevitable question: "Do games and gamification used within a corporate environment lead to better learning and, ultimately, better organizational performance?"

Effectiveness in a Corporate Setting

In a peer-reviewed literature review titled "Serious Games and Gamification in the Corporate Training Environment: a Literature Review", Kristi Larson of the University of North Texas explores the application and use of games and gamification within corporate settings.

Laron indicated that "in the workplace, gamification provides many benefits for companies, including enhanced workforce recruitment and retention, increased program adoption, and improved work performance." She reviewed studies surrounding gamification and serious games and identified 50 journal articles, 21 conference proceedings, six white papers and dissertations, seven professional reports, and six books that were included in her review.

In the article, Larson provides the following examples of corporate use of games and gamification.

• Walmart instituted a gamified Safety Initiative Program and saw a decrease in 50% for lost time in a six-month period (Baker 2016; Saha and Pandita 2017).
• McDonalds saw a revenue impact of $30 million when they converted their staff training program on a new system into a game with scores, challenges, timers, and feedback, with 85% of employees perceiving the gamified environment as beneficial (Saha and Pandita 2017; Tuominen 2018).

Larson is not alone in her findings, in a study conducted by the team of Baxter, Holderness Jr. and Wood titled "The Effects of Gamification on Corporate Compliance Training." The team performed a field study with 158 employees of a large, multinational bank to examine the effectiveness of gamified anti-corruption training. They found that, not only, did the employees strongly prefer gamified training to traditional, non-gamified training but that gamified training modestly increased employees’ knowledge of the bank’s anti-corruption policies. And they concluded that their results suggest that gamification is a valuable tool for improving anti-corruption training.

Research I've conducted with Valtchanov and Pastore (2020) indicate that even the use of causal games followed by a quick training related question can increase learning and motivation within a corporate setting.

We had two conditions, employees at one company who could play a game and then learn and others who had no game, just learning questions. We found the following:

• Learners in the game condition logged in to do their training significantly more often than those in the no-game condition.
• Leaners were engaged by the opportunity to play a casual game as the motivational hook.
• Learners in the game condition answered significantly more questions correctly and had significantly longer correct answer streaks than learners in the no-game condition.

The study was called "Enhancing motivation in workplace training with casual games: a twelve month field study of retail employees."

From even more personal experience, I've created a highly effective board game (pre-pandemic) that helped leaders think at the enterprise level. The results were rich understanding of how the elements of the organization all need to work together to avoid sub-optimization. And in a talk a few weeks ago with some great folks from Microsoft, I learned more about their use of games for training and how they have implemented gamification to great effect.

Waiting until games "catch on" from a learning perspective or until the research unequivocally "proves" games are effective for learning is the wrong approach for organizations at this time. The time for implementing game-based learning and gamification into your organization is now. The time for asking "where's the proof" are over. The proof, the results are here.

Conclusion

With the Great Resignation at hand, it is in the interest of many employers to consider that "having fun" might not be a perk but might be a required motivational factor that is not just good for the employee but good for the bottom line, employee morale and customers. According to Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, "The opposite of play is not work, the opposite of play is depression." It might make sense given the above evidence and results of using games in a corporate setting to consider how games can positively impact your organization.

Bio

Karl Kapp, Ed.D. is a professor of Instructional Technology at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA. Karl is also co-founder of a game platform called?The Enterprise Game Stack?which uses a card paradigm to teach sales, leadership and negotiation skills. Karl has consulted and spoken around the world on learning and development with a focus on the topic of games and gamification for learning. Contact him at?[email protected]?or follow him on Twitter:?@kkapp.

References

Baker, M. (2016). Striving for effective cyber workforce development. Software Engineering Institute, May. Retrieved from https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/asset_files/WhitePaper/2016_019_001_473577.pdf.

Baxter, R. J., Holderness Jr., D. K., &Wood, D. A. (2017). The effects of gamification on corporate compliance training: A partial replication and field study of true office anti-corruption training programs. Journal of Forensic Accounting Research, 2(1), A20–A30. https://doi.org/10.2308/jfar-51725.

Kapp, Karl & Valtchanov, Deltcho & Pastore, Ray. (2020). Enhancing motivation in workplace training with casual games: a twelve month field study of retail employees. Educational Technology Research and Development. 68. 10.1007/s11423-020-09769-2.?

Larson, K. Serious Games and Gamification in the Corporate Training Environment: a Literature Review.?TechTrends?64,?319–328 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00446-7

Saha,M. D., & Pandita, D. (2017). Digitalizing human resources through gamification for employee engagement. ELK Asia Pacific Journals. Retrieved ay 14, 2019, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/deepika_Pandita2/publication/323748863_DIGITALIZING_HUMAN_RESOURCES_THROUGH_GAMIFICATION_FOR_EMPLOYEE_ENGAGEMENT/links/5aa8e4eb0f7e9b0ea3083dfa/DIGITALIZING-HUMAN-RESOURCES-THROUGHGAMIFICATION-FOR-EMPLOYEE-ENGAGEMENT.pdf.

Tuominen, T. (2018). Gamifying employee training (Master’s thesis). Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere. Retrieved June 14, 2019, from https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/103797