Games are an emerging force in human resources. Organizations, both for-profit corporations and non-profit organizations, are exploring the use of games for training and assessment. Educational games have been a thing since the original development of Oregon Trail in 1971, but they haven’t been paid much attention to by industry until recently. Games are amazing learning tools, it’s unfortunate there’s been such a delay in adoption, but thankfully we are now seeing some attention paid to this wonderful opportunity.
While I’ve had a passion for games and games-based learning as far back as I can remember, the first time I remember hearing about the corporate world taking it seriously was a news piece (https://www.hrreporter.com/news/hr-news/loreal-plays-games-with-training/311982) about L’Oréal, a major cosmetics company, using it for executive training. Not only was a company doing it, but the media were also interested in a company doing it. This was a watershed moment. Just before this came out a scientific study had announced that video game-based training for surgeons had shown increases in speed and decreases in errors (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17309970/). Unfortunately by the time the news got around the 2008 Financial Crisis had devastated the economy and corporations and government were in austerity mode. So much for game-based training having a chance to catch on.
Thankfully, even though there were significant delays, we do see a major shift towards game-based learning across government and corporations these days. The covid pandemic and the need for increased digital tools, teambuilding and presence has likely been a positive influence on adoption. We’ve seen global leaders adopt the concept with McDonalds using it for customer service training and Dominos for pizza-making training. As Fortune reported (https://www.aol.com/finance/kpmg-offered-video-game-training-130254129.html) global accounting powerhouse KPMG adopted it, and thanks to a study by Harvard Business School and Columbia Business School, they found the practice led to a stunning 16% increase in client acquisition and 22% increase in business with new clients! With 16% more customers the cost of the practice can pay off in no time!
There are many different opportunities for an organization to use game-based learning – the depth and breadth of games as a medium support just about any possibility. We’ll take a look at four of the top choices for internal use of games in organizations here. Of course there’s so much more that’s possible, these are just the most common choices in practice currently. Games also make great external tools for customer interaction and marketing, but we’ve got lots of articles on promotional games to cover that topic!
Hiring Assessment
We’ll lead off our look at corporate games starting with the first place new employees could find them – in the hiring process. Hiring is a major challenge for companies, with increasing job search requirements on social benefits, job applications for any position can easily range into the hundreds, or even thousands. Finding the right candidates can be a huge struggle. Some companies have turned to game systems to help sort through the crowd. Games can be used in screening or interview processes, having applicants play a game to assess their skills, knowledge or culture fit in addition to more traditional tools like interviews.
Games in the hiring process can be a more pleasant way for applicants to be screened than many traditional methods, though the time commitment needs to be balanced. Most application processes seem to leave game systems for a 2nd or 3rd tier of hiring selection rather than for the initial masses. Games can be used to both familiarize a candidate with the company, its procedures and its culture, while also assessing their choices for knowledge in a skill area, competencies, literacy, numeracy, or decision making. In an era of increasing automation, strategic skills and high-level thinking are becoming much more critical skills for hiring, games can be the perfect tool for assessing such hard to judge skills.
Operational Training & Onboarding
Selecting a candidate is only the start of hiring, onboarding is often a painful hurdle in getting to productivity with a new employee. Game-based learning has a lot of potential in this area. Mistakes are common with new hires, so why not allow them to make mistakes in a virtual environment where failure is a part of the learning process? That’s what games are all about. You get hit by a lot of fireballs before you manage to rescue the princess. Games anticipate and incorporate failure as a part of learning. By creating virtual (not necessarily virtual reality, but any not-the-real-world space like any game uses) learning environments we can ensure that new employees have a safe and efficient way to learn, mistakes included. We can easily and painlessly use these mistakes to reinforce learning, providing further instructions and opportunities to give clarity and skill development to avoid the mistakes in the future and in the real world. Games can also offer analytics, so where people fail could be tracked and analyzed for future training or process improvement!
Past the onboarding stage, games can still provide valuable training for any operations. Whether a process change occurs, jobs shift, new products are added, or whatever changes are happening, games can help showcase and train for operational procedure. Virtual reality has done amazing things for hazardous jobs training, but traditional 2D and 3D games can be just as effective in other roles.
Strategic Thinking & Visionary Practice
As the L’Oreal case shows executives can be a great target for game-based learning. Strategic decision making is one of the most fundamental purposes of games, from the flight simulators used to train military aviators and digital wargames used to train generals today we see boardgame naval simulators at the turn of the 20th century, all the way back to chess as the original wargame of castles, horses and kings. An operational error by a new employee can be expensive, but a strategic error by executives can be fatal. There’s very few opportunities to practice and train in strategic thinking and planning, except by games. A thoughtful and meaningful simulation or strategic game can provide key training for a more insightful, adaptive, broad-minded, and successful executive and management team.
Compliance & Awareness
Lastly, games can be a great way to test awareness and practice compliance with policy and standards. As we mentioned above they are a great way to introduce new protocols and processes in operational training, but this can be extended to a refresher or testing system as well. While no employee likes to be tested, a properly made game can ensure the process is fun, and can take more of an upkeep/reminder approach rather than the harsher traditional school style testing. Games are about making learning fun, good corporate games should be no different. We’re looking for results, not opportunities for sadism. Fun, engaging, non-punitive approaches to instilling proper procedure will always out perform surveillance & punishment-based systems in the long run and don’t result in confrontations and turn over. People want to be good at and proud of their jobs, unless they’re forced into negative behaviour by existential needs, they’ll migrate towards higher ideals and motivations. If we can build systems that respect and promote personal growth, we can build a culture of growth and success, personally and organizationally.
The Bottom Line
Games are a growing interest to the world’s leading companies. They’re adopting them for myriad purposes and they’re seeing results. It’s been a long and bumpy road to adoption but we’re well past due when any management team should be thinking about them. Companies like Massive Corporation are here to build custom game software to help your team be the best it can be. There are so many potentials it can be hard to know where to start. Thankfully we offer free consultations, so if you’re interested in how games can be used to enhance your organization, just drop us a line (email “info” at this domain). As both game developers and educational experts we’re ready and able to make things happen for you. We can analyze your needs then design and build systems to enhance any aspect of your operations.