Making Embedding Organizational Values Fun: Include Gamification in Your Learning Strategy
Embedding organizational values into the daily work culture often feels like a daunting task. It can seem like yet another compliance checklist or dry presentation that employees sit through without fully absorbing. But what if learning these values became not just effective, but also enjoyable? This is where gamification comes into play, transforming what might seem like a chore into an engaging and dynamic learning experience.
The Challenge
Recently, we at The Gamification Company received an exciting request from an American revenue cycle management company. This client serves hospitals, health systems, and physician groups across the United States, with teams spread across the U.S and India. They reached out to us with a critical task: cascading their organizational values and associated behaviors throughout the entire company using a sustained, engaging learning strategy.
They asked a key question: How can we use gamification to ensure our employees not only understand, but live our values?
The answer? A multi-phase approach that doesn’t just introduce values once but ensures they are understood and embedded into everyday behaviors—through fun and learning! Here's how we did it.
The Solution: A 4-Stage Gamified Learning Framework
At The Gamification Company, we use our proprietary four-stage accelerated learning framework: Build Awareness, Deepen Understanding, Embed Behaviors and, Make It Sustainable. This framework helps deliver meaningful learning experiences that employees not only remember but actively use in their work. By gamifying this journey, we turned values from static words on paper into interactive experiences employees can engage with daily.
Stage 1: Build Awareness through Gamified Assessments
The first step in any organizational value cascade is building awareness. People need to know what the values are before they can understand or apply them. But this awareness phase shouldn’t feel like a lecture. Instead, we made it fun and interactive by using our nGage? micro-assessment hub.
With nGage?, employees participated in a series of engaging microgames that assessed their current understanding of the company’s three core values. The games weren’t just about testing knowledge; they were designed to introduce the values in an organic and fun way. The beauty of gamification is that, while players are focused on scoring points or completing challenges, they’re also absorbing key information. These microgames helped employees learn about the values without feeling like they were being formally trained.
Through playful competition, employees became curious and more aware of what their company stood for, setting the stage for deeper learning.
Stage 2: Deepen Understanding with Value-Based Workshops
Once employees are aware of the values, the next step is to deepen their understanding. This requires more than just reading a list of values; it’s about understanding how they are applied in daily work and why they matter.
To achieve this, we implemented our Poppin Skillshots? workshops, a neuroscience-based learning method that relies on the power of play to enhance learning retention. These workshops were short, high-energy, and outcome-focused sessions that lasted 90 minutes—ideal for busy people managers.
During these sessions, managers were introduced to the values in a way that tied them directly to real-world situations. But we didn’t stop there. We also brought learning into a casual, everyday setting through what we call Value Cafes. These were pop-up spaces, often in company cafeterias, where employees could take a break, play value-based games, and interact with the company’s core principles in a more relaxed, social atmosphere.
By merging physical and digital play in a familiar environment, we were able to deepen employees' understanding of how these values come to life in their everyday roles. These gamified experiences didn’t just tell employees about values—they showed them in a fun, memorable way.
Stage 3: Embed Behaviors with Cue Cards and Team Activities
Building awareness and deepening understanding are only the first steps in embedding organizational values. The true test is whether those values stick and become part of employees’ daily behaviors. This requires repetition and practice, but again, in a way that keeps people engaged rather than bored.
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We created custom Cue Card sets for people managers. These cards included activities and conversation starters to use during team briefings or huddles. The activities were designed to spark discussions and group sharing on how employees had put values into practice. This could include anything from sharing success stories to discussing challenges and solutions that align with the company's principles.
By embedding these activities into regular team meetings, we created a space where employees could practice the values in real time. These discussions gave the values life and relevance, transforming them from abstract ideas into actionable behaviors that employees saw themselves using daily.
The result? A steady, natural incorporation of values into the workplace culture that didn’t require employees to memorize definitions but instead live the values through their actions.
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Stage 4: Make It Sustainable with ‘SeTU – Bridge of Values?’
To truly embed values for the long term, the organization needed to ensure that the learning is sustainable. This is where our unique proprietary game, SeTU – Bridge of Values?, came into play.
Available in both physical and digital formats, SeTU – Bridge of Values? is designed to uncover the dynamic relationship between organizational values and corresponding behaviors.
The game helped employees discover how their actions are driven by core values and how those values impact not only themselves but their teams and the wider organization. Through interactive gameplay, employees can made choices that directly showed them the consequences of acting in line—or out of line—with the values.
This wasn’t just a theoretical exercise: employees experienced firsthand how behaviors rooted in core values influence overall outcomes.
Playing SeTU – Bridge of Values? offered a fun, collaborative way to reinforce and sustain what employees had learned during the first three stages.
With the combination of hands-on play and thoughtful reflection, SeTU – Bridge of Values? transformed values into sustainable practices. Employees gained not only knowledge but a deep, personal understanding of why these values matter and how to apply them daily in their job roles.
Why Gamification Works in Embedding Values
At its core, gamification taps into people’s intrinsic motivations—such as achievement, curiosity, and social connection. When employees engage in fun, interactive experiences, they’re more likely to want to learn and apply what they’ve learned. This is key for embedding organizational values, which can sometimes feel abstract or disconnected from everyday work.
Here are a few key reasons why gamification works so well in this context:
Final Thoughts: Making Values Stick
Embedding organizational values into your workforce doesn’t have to be a dry, box-checking exercise. Gamification adds an element of fun and engagement that can make values not just memorable, but lived. By building awareness, deepening understanding, embedding behaviors, and making learning sustainable through well-designed games and interactive experiences, you can create a culture where values are not just words on a wall—they’re part of how your employees work every day.
In today’s fast-paced world, attention is a precious commodity. Leveraging gamification for sustained value learning ensures that your employees not only understand but embrace and practice the values that make your organization unique. And, they’ll have fun doing it!