Sometimes employees don’t feel thrilled by the prospect of training. If you add game elements to the training aka gamification, you could have a real winner on your hands.

This is what Nupur Avantika, the head of instructional design at Indecomm is saying in a new blog post.  She says that there are many ways you could gamify so to speak. It all depends on the goal you want to achieve. If it is a specific skill and/or knowledge, then you may allow the trainees to use the programs they feel most comfortable with and have a competition about the best results.

Or you could have a gaming element in the sense of activity, provided feedback, team awards if teaming is suitable for the training or personal awards and so on. There can also be different levels, badges for reaching certain mini goals, extra points for early completion and extra points for quality completion. Some training apps already have these gaming element built-in and you can even use predefined scoring tables, leaderboards with sharing and many more.

Another way of gamification can be the creation of challenges. Let’s say the skills training is complete. A great way to see if the people have actually learned something is not to have them go through an exam, but give them a challenge to solve using the new skills. There might even be several different challenges with various outcomes. This will actually have learners to use their knowledge and apply it, not simply to circle possible correct answers.

The gamification techniques can vary greatly depending on the type of training. Badges and achievements for example are better suited for mobile and e-learning courses. Teaming and challenges are better for in-class trainings. Of course you can mix and match gamification elements, you can adapt them or even think of your own. Before you add them, though, it is best to talk to the trainees and get their feedback if they would be interested. You can even do a small test run and then easily scale it up if you and the trainees are pleased with the results.