Corporate Training: What's your Why?

Gamification of real-world training and development is a powerful technique which can motivate people and help generate loyalty to your organization, its products, and its message. At its core, Gamification is about finding the fun in the things that we have to do.

But like any of our training or learning programs, before we begin to design with gamification, we must first answer the question Why?

The key to engaging employees and developing effective training and learning programs must start by establishing the motivation to learn.

Adult learners want to know why they should learn something. Managers who send their direct reports to training need to clearly understand why they should do so if we want them to support the application of that training afterwards.

In corporate training, explaining why means rather than beginning our discussion about what learning objectives a program must provide or how the program might best be delivered, we should first consider why the program exists, and why people would want to participate in it. Clarify why the training outcomes are important in terms of the benefits to both the business and the employees. Then use these benefits in all communications with business leaders and participants to explain why they should actively engage in the training.

During the planning stage of every new training initiative, we should understand the business goals that are driving the project. Ask these questions: How will this project add value to the company? What value will the company get because of this training? (Increased customer satisfaction, increased revenue, decreased returns, decrease in equipment downtime, etc.)

The goal of understanding our WHY isn’t to be good at training – the goal is how well the training helps to achieve business goals.

To learn more about gamification strategy design for corporate learning visit: www.SententiaGames.com