“The traditional approach to training creates opportunities to enhance long-term knowledge retention” says Abby Vietor, Global Director of Dealer Training and Productivity at Ford. With 3,000 dealerships and 164,000 employees in the US alone, Ford understand the pressures of training their colleagues in fast moving technology, products, and services. In years gone by, changes within the automotive industry were often mechanical or design led, easy to communicate and easy for the likes of sales colleagues to get to grips with. Now, we’ve entered an age of software-defined vehicles, where consumers demand enhanced technical and specialist advice when making their purchasing decisions. For Ford, this has meant moving away from traditional text-heavy L&D programmes – frankly, the level of knowledge and understanding required cannot be provided via old-style e-learning techniques. Instead, Ford and others, have moved to gamified programmes “utilizing spaced reinforcement… helping dealer employees retain what they learn… using ‘a teach, show, practice, reinforce’ framework.”

Ford have bundled this into what they’re calling the ‘Ford University’ and have onboarded award-winning producers and creatives to help develop and curate a highly engaging learning experience with AI coaching and cinematic-style resources – think big budget, Netflix style investment for their colleagues. Why? Because where once gaming was considered trivial at best (perhaps a distraction at worst) it’s generating real-world results across performance, productivity, engagement, retention and more. Last month, I mentioned that KPMG had rolled-out a gamified training tool to their employees called Globerunner…and the results were astounding. Across those offices using the tool, they saw an average of 25% fee increase, a 16% lift in new customers and 22% more opportunities.

Take from this what you will, but one thing’s for sure, we certainly can’t ignore the significance of the game-based learning market which is forecasted to be worth 29.7 billion USD by 2026. And while I’m not saying you need to invest as heavily as Ford or KPMG, it’s certainly worth considering the pros and cons to assess whether we should be starting to embed gamified training as part of our L&D programmes.

Pros

• Gaming increases motivation, engagement, and feelings of achievement. As researcher, Bohyun Kim states, “mundane everyday activities in the nongame context turn into gaming opportunities for rewards like badges, points, rankings, and statuses.
• Gaming provides psychological safety. Think about how many times you’ve ‘died’ in game; you leapt too far, jumped too high, made a wrong turn. It doesn’t matter, does it? Games provide psychological safety for you to make mistakes, be creative and learn.
• Gaming provides a platform to ‘Teach, show, practice, reinforce’. Here’s the issue with traditional L&D, it’s rooted in Teach and Show but often neglects Practice and Reinforce. It tells you what you need to know, granted, but aside from perhaps a quiz at the end, that’s about it. Gaming is unique in that it provides a platform for you to use the skills you’ve learnt and enhance those skills as you continue through the game.
• Gaming is highly customisable. Not all colleagues will require the same training, even in the same role or function. Whereas traditionally it would be time consuming to create bespoke versions of training for every colleague, gaming allows for a highly personalised experience.

Cons

• It’s an investment. Whichever platform you choose, there’s no doubt that a move into the gamified training arena is an investment and should be considered carefully. Remember, the goal is not to be ‘cool’ or ‘trendy’, it’s to create a compelling experience that helps enable better learning by satisfying psychological needs and aligning with your values, culture, and training objectives.
• It needs to be inclusive. Not everyone learns in the same way. Whichever programme or tool you select, it needs to be accessible and engaging to all, offering different types of gamified experiences that are inclusive, representative, and respectful of those from different backgrounds.

We’re all familiar with the concept of ‘work-life balance’. In theory, it’s an enabler to people enjoying balanced lifestyles, and impacts colleague productivity, engagement, output, and retention. As a concept, work-life balance has most definitely put us on the right track; yet as hybrid and flexible working has matured and become more well practiced, I’d suggest the traditional notion of work-life balance is somewhat flawed.

For many of us, work and life are no longer mutually exclusive entities – the lines have blurred. Our changing attitudes towards work, aided by advances in technology, mean that work and life are interwoven like never before, and many of us prefer a lifestyle where work is personalised to our own wants and needs. In addition, the concept of work-life balance has often been orientated around the notion of ‘traditional’ families and isn’t always inclusive of those from more diverse backgrounds or with circumstances that are not universally applicable.

For instance, as businesses, we have provisions to cover typical circle of life events such as maternity leave, paternity leave, bereavement etc. But what about those struggling to have children? Or those trying to navigate the complexities of becoming parents for the first time? What about caring for elderly relations? What are we doing for them?

We also need to think about whether our policies are gender neutral or whether the ‘work-life’ concept has skewed these in favour of historic, societal norms. For example, Dr Jasmine Kelland, a Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of Plymouth, has identified what she terms the ‘fatherhood forfeit’. Her research indicates that those fathers who try to obtain roles designed to accommodate caregiving, such as part-time opportunities, are often treated discriminately and with suspicion around their pursuit of so-called, work-life balance.

So, what’s the answer? In my view, we need to reimagine work-life balance in favour of work-life integration or work-life harmony. A recognition that everyone is unique, and the goal is to allow our people to create a fulfilling life with work as a central, integrated component, whatever that looks like to them.

Martin Norris, Head of Recruitment