How to educate employees more effectively – a few words about a game that employees can play to the delight of their boss

Do you know this feeling? You are already spending the third hour on industry training, and time seems to have stopped. You don’t  know how to sit in a chair anymore, to forget that you have a spine just for a while, and a walk to the toilet begins to appear to you as the top-flight  entertainment.

We also know it …

That’s why we decided to create a more attractive alternative to the standard form of employee education. More attractive, meaning what?

The one, that:

• does not require anyone to appear at a particular place at a specific time.
• allows employees to educate themselves while sitting on the bus, in the waiting room at the dentist, or waiting in the shopping mall until their wives finally buy the shoes,
• involves you more than the best Netflix series, unleashes the spirit of competition in your team ,increases employee motivation and unites more effectively that a joint beer in the old town.

It’s not possible? And yet it is possible . How do we know that? Because we succeeded!

How gamification works?

Have you ever heard the term : gamification? If not, then you’ve missed a lot. Gamification in business has a lot of applications, however, we used this method to create a mobile game that in a pleasant form provided our players with a huge portion of knowledge and entertainment. A game in the company ? Why not?

Our child is called  „Enter the game” and has the form of an application on the phone with  Android or iOS system. The game was launched at  Volkswagen Poznań, that is why its action takes place in … a production hall. We have divided the game into three rounds, each of them consists of several boards.

Imagine that you are a player. You start your mission inconspicuously – by tiding up the abandoned production hall. However, with each task you complete, the level of difficulty increases and new challenges arise  – starting from building the production line , constructing a car chassis, placing door and window assembly points, painting,  until the final effect.

Your goal is to produce a complete, safe , tested car and you accomplish this goal in small steps. And all the production processes in your own virtual factory run as they really do in reality: with the use of appropriate technologies and machines, with the help of staff that you need to train yourself. At the same time you cannot ignore health and safety regulations, because you will come to a deadlock and it will be impossible to get to the next board.

Your four wheels must also undergo quality control , but before you do this , you will face the next challenge: building a Test Centre, equipped with hall, a maneuvering area and  a control tower. And once you learn that what you have produced works ,it’s time to introduce innovations ! Thanks to research on car engines you will learn everything about  hybrid cars and hydrogen car charging stations.

And of course you need to keep your business in check  – you will create Media Management Centre from the scratch, where you will be able to monitor data from factories, such as water consumption , electricity consumption and air used  for ventilation and technological processes. No factory can operate without employees  – so you will need to train them on one of the boards.

This way, slowly, all stages of production will cease to be a secret, your virtual factory earns a lot of  Stellars, which you can invest in  its development. And learn by the way … Do you know what  RFID technology is? What is predictive analysis about? What are the ways to check paint quality and airflow regulation systems? What measurements are made in engine test room? You don’t know that? And our players know it.

How gamification motivates employees

Each correctly completed task is scored, and thanks to the gamification platform a ranking of all players is created, where you can compare your results with  a colleague from the neighboring department or win in a virtual game even with your boss’s boss, or even the boss of all bosses. In order to engage the employee in the game in the company, also the first login on a given day is scored. Knowledge acquired systematically, in small steps , has the chance to survive longer than the one which flooded us with important information like tsunami that lasted for several hours. And this is what learning through gamification is all about.

That’s not all. We did something, so that the employee would not have to develop this virtual factory alone. That’s why employees have the opportunity to create four-person companies. After establishing the company, the participants are shown quizzes with industry questions, and providing correct answer to them is additionally scored and it raises not only the position in the ranking, but also… employees ‘ engagement.

How gamification can help your business

1042 employees participated voluntarily in our project . And believe me that we didn’t have to force anyone to take part in the competition. Here are the benefits that the company has achieved by giving gamification a chance and implementing such an innovative form of employee  education:

• it gained an educated team, in addition, a well-educated one , because employees learning through gamification also acquired the knowledge that goes beyond the scope of professional duties performed by them on daily basis ,
• the training ceased to be a logistic challenge: it wasn’t necessary to arrange it during working hours, engage experts, adjust the room, draw crowds of employees away from their daily activities at the expense of the entire company’s efficiency,
• acquiring knowledge in this form was much more effective than on a standard course, during which the employee is only a passive listener and he can let his thoughts delve into the structure of today’s dinner at any time. The game forces your presence here and now ,you have to  fully engage yourself,
• employees had the chance to integrate even better and feel part of a team. The best players have become recognizable in the company whose staff counts in thousands,
• we were able to motivate employees to act, to raise professional competences, and to strengthen their sense of belonging to the brand. Certainly, we have provided many people with reason to boast about their employer’s innovativeness to their friends.

Sounds good, right? Does your company also want to enter the game ?