Management training is one of the key areas for business owners to get right. By installing reliable and competent leaders, the company should be able to thrive from the top down. Theories about what makes a good manager has changed through the years, with a more recent focus on communication and empathy skills. Different business owners may have diverse ideas about what the most crucial attributes are, but most can agree on the fact that it’s the delivery of the training methods that may need adaptations in the modern age. To drill home the training and make it more memorable for everyone involved, gamification could be key.
What Are The Standard Methods of Management Training?
You’ve all been there. Rows upon rows of seats looking up at a stage. A PowerPoint slide show. Hours of lecturing sandwiched between brief coffee breaks and awkward mingling. This rigid approach isn’t enjoyable for anyone. The person on stage talking away until their mouth is dry and the person in the audience desperately trying to stay awake have one thing in common. They are both wishing they were somewhere else.
The traditional management training day has taken this form and structure for years, but times do appear to be changing. Studies have shown that 23 per cent of employees will leave a job if they feel the development and training available isn’t good enough. For this reason, businesses have had to innovate and come up with more inspiring ways of structuring training days. Now, there is a much greater focus on combining different elements in the training process and eliminating rigidity. This can include a combination of interactive videos, eLearning, and real-world situation simulations. Gamification can be applied across all of these forms of training.
Gaming is a Language That Speaks to The Majority
Whenever anyone plans a training session, they need to consider their audience. Everyone learns in different ways, so something that may be effective with one person may not work with another. Some people are more visual, while others place a greater focus on auditory learning, for example. For this reason, presentations and workshops need to be designed in a way that appeals to a combination of learning approaches. This can be done through gamification, as it draws on visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic processes.
The other reason why gamification makes sense as a training method is that the majority of people will be into gaming or will have had some experience with it. The rise of smartphones has brought gaming to a greater amount of people, with research suggesting more than 60 per cent of owners install a game onto their device within the first week of purchase.
The online casino sector has also been a huge contributing factor towards bringing gaming to the masses. It is growing at an astonishing rate and is expected to be worth $92.9 billion by 2023. Slots have helped online casinos reach the greatest number of players, as the variety on offer means there is something that appeals to everyone. Some of the top Vegas online slots at the moment include Golden Goddess, White Orchid, Wizard of Oz, Monopoly, and Cleopatra. With advice with regards to mobile platforms too. These titles highlight the sheer wealth of options when it comes to different genres, which explains why so many people play them.
If an audience at a management training event is an accurate representation of a cross-section of society, the majority of people will likely have played at least one game in their lifetime. Therefore, gamification in the training process should be a language that speaks to a lot of people.
What Gamification Methods Could be Brought in?
You may have decided that you need to involve more gamification in your management training, but don’t know how to implement it yet. There are various ways to gamify the processes involved in training, meaning that you can keep the engagement levels high throughout the day.
Technology has played a huge part in making training sessions more enjoyable. Provide each participant with a tablet, and you can arrange interconnected activities that involve everyone in the room. This can come in the form of quizzes, or you could use apps like Nearpod which allow people to write or draw at the same time.
Giving participants a competition or a chance to win should be a good way to motivate them to get involved. Having regular workshop activities throughout the day, in which people have a chance to compete for prizes or glory, should be an effective way to drill home the new ideas being taught.
If you want to make your management training days more engaging and fun for everyone involved, you should think about switching from traditional methods. Introducing a gaming aspect will appeal to a lot of people, and should keep them from drifting off throughout the day. It may help people to remember the things they learnt as well.