Gamification and Training: How to boost operational performance?

Our goal: engage learners in training

Skills development is often a key success factor in achieving operational objectives. Some companies observe a strong correlation between employee training and operational results. For example, the more a salesperson masters the necessary skills, the higher his or her sales figures will be.

Motivating employees to take regular training courses is therefore a key challenge for companies.

How can you make training attractive and motivate employees to take regular courses?

First ingredient: linking training to operational performance

Training often takes a back seat in terms of priorities, because it is not linked to operational activity, to the day-to-day work carried out by the employee. This makes training time seem like wasted time.

To make our training offering more attractive, we need to demonstrate the link between training and operational performance.

This link can be formalized in the notion of competence:

Competence = theoretical knowledge + operational performance

‍

An employee is competent if he or she has a theoretical knowledge base, validated by operational results(performance indicators, KPIs).

There is a virtuous circle:

• Employees understand that training can help them achieve their operational objectives today, when their KPIs are not on target.
• The company and the manager must be able to adjust the training offer in line with observed needs, thanks to operational KPIs.

Validate competence

Each skill is validated at the end of a course that integrates both theoretical data and KPIs.

‍

Let's take the banking sector as an example. Each advisor has objectives, "standards" to be validated as a professional. This applies to a wide range of areas: selling bank cards, opening passbook savings accounts, selling insurance policies and providing a warm welcome in the branch. Each of these major areas is governed by competencies.

For example, for the "Banking" skill, the prerequisites are as follows:

• have completed the "New bankcard offers" training course
• share experience with other agencies in the network
• X bankcard sales in the quarter
• Y premium card sales in the quarter

Below is a diagram of the validation process for the "Banking" skill.

‍

Mapping skills: giving meaning to training within the company

A comprehensive skills map for a department or company gives long-term meaning to training. It shows prospects for development within the organization, but also opens up career horizons. This skills enhancement plan is certified by operational results and by the management team, and not just by theoretical training. This lends even greater credibility to this skills enhancement.

‍

The visualization of this set of professional skills (materialized by Badges) encourages the employee to complete them. The "collection" of skills is a gamification technique that is particularly well-suited to accomplishment-type personalities.

‍

Second ingredient: animate and gamify skills development

Insofar as it is closely linked to operational performance, training becomes a day-to-day activity that can be animated. If challenges are organized to motivate teams, why not include a training criterion in the scheme? If we push the logic, why not organize a challenge dedicated to training?

Here are a few simple ideas for running training courses throughout the year:

• Setting training objectives These objectives can have different time horizons: weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly.
  • Achieving objectives through microlearning: if training is to become an everyday subject, it needs to be made more digestible. Employees need to be sure that they can achieve their objectives, even if they only spend 5 minutes a few times a week. This is the philosophy behind micro-learning, which consists in creating very short lessons that can be easily completed between two meetings. The Cards solution makes it possible to create such training courses, and then integrate them into the Objow experience.

• Organizing challenges For example, the employee or team who validates the most lessons during the month wins the challenge. Other criteria are also possible, such as quiz success rate, speed of completion of training, completion of all training courses, etc.
  • Organize a quiz competition: the quiz is the perfect mechanism for organizing a competition around employees' knowledge. The MOS Duel solution pits two employees against each other through a series of questions. The points won contribute to Objow's gamification path, combining knowledge and operational results.

• Offer rewards : insofar as skills are linked to operational KPIs, it becomes legitimate to reward employees who validate them. For example, with a gift, a gift voucher, a team reward...

• Communicating skills and badges: as we saw in the first part of this article, progress along the skills development path is marked by the awarding of badges. These events punctuate the employee's experience throughout the year. What's more, when a new skill becomes available, it's an opportunity to communicate on the release of the new badge added to the collection.

‍

Conclusion

Achieving operational results through training means ensuring that 100% of employees are committed to completing training courses.

This requires two main ingredients:

• Link skills development to operational results. Competence = training + achievement of an operational KPI.
• Run training as you would a day-to-day operational activity, with challenges, objectives and even rewards.

‍

‍