Mandatory Education

"Mandatory" and "education" are probably two words in the English language that, when used together, incite strongly negative emotions in hospital employees everywhere.  What perhaps is less appreciated by those same hospital employees is that virtually every organization in just about every industry requires some kind of annual or semi-annual required training.  Let's be honest, most of us, often begrudgingly (and often while multi-tasking) skim through the required slide-decks or online videos hoping to gather enough information to be able to correctly answer the quiz that invariably comes at the end.  And I won't even begin to argue about whether mandatory training as currently implemented is actually effective or not.  I'd be willing to bet that very little of the information in these modules stays with us for much longer than a few minutes after we receive the certificate of completion.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I read an incredibly thought-provoking article in the most recent issue of Harvard Business Review (see "Does Gamified Training Get Results?" in the March/April 2023 issue).  I've learned through the years that I can be easily manipulated through the technique known as gamification (just see my post "All Things Must Pass"  as an example).  Gamification is defined as the addition of the elements of a game to what are typically non-game activities.  These elements include points, badges, and leaderboards.  So, can gamification make "mandatory education" more fun?  More importantly, does gamification make "mandatory education" more effective?  A new study performed at the global professional services firm KPMG suggests that it can (see the working paper "Learning or Playing?  The Effect of Gamified Training on Performance").

The Harvard Business School investigators, Ryan Buell, Wei Cai, and Tatiana Sandino conducted a natural field experiment (which is an experiment conducted in the field where the subjects are not aware that an experiment is taking place) on the implementation of a gamified training tool for the employees at a professional services firm (de-identified in the working paper but revealed to be KPMG in the HBR article).  KPMG wanted to increase their employees' awareness and understanding of the firm's value proposition in order to attract more customers.  The study was conducted in 24 offices participating in the training, which was rolled out at various times in a randomized fashion to create a natural experimental group and control group.  

The gamified training tool was called "KPMG Globerunner" in which employees designed their own avatars who would "race around the world" and answer questions about the firm's service offerings.  Each correct answer would earn travel points, which would open up new travel opportunities for the avatar.  Wrong answers would be corrected with a brief explanation, but no points were awarded.  Employees could also complete mini-game challenges to earn additional points or unlock new levels.  The tool included a leaderboard that showed each avatar and the number of points earned according to rank.

Participation in the training was optional, and employees could engage in the platform as often or as long as they liked.  The HBS investigators analyzed five performance measures on a monthly basis for over 29 months - fees collected, number of clients served, total business opportunities generated, opportunities generated from existing clients, and opportunities generated for new clients.  They also evaluated how much time employees spent on the platform, as well as the number of questions that each employee answered in the training module.  Finally, the investigators analyzed staff engagement, based upon the percentage of employees in each office who logged on to the tool at least once, as well as leader engagement, which was based on how much the leaders in each office played the game.

Analysis showed that the gamified training tool increased the fees collected by participating offices by more than 25% above baseline, while the number of clients increased by 16%.  The investigators also demonstrated that the more employees played the gamified training tool, the more likely the office was to significantly improve performance.  Similarly, offices with engaged leaders also were more likely to improve performance.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the impact of the gamified training was sustained for up to 18 months!

These are incredibly promising results!  The study didn't measure the employees' satisfaction with the gamified training platform, but the fact that higher staff engagement with the tool led to greater success at least suggests that they either enjoyed "playing the game" or enjoyed competing with their fellow employees.  KPMG executives were interviewed in an accompanying article in Harvard Business Review, in which it was revealed that 83% of the employees say that they enjoy playing KPMG Globerunner.  As Christian Gossan, a director at KPMG Australia said, "Rote training is boring - but games are the opposite of boring."  Gossan was asked if any employees played the game so much that their productivity decreased.  He responded, "You do need to monitor for that.  Each year a small number of employees - about 1 in 10,000 - become compulsive users, and for their sake as well as the firm's, we need to intervene."

It would be really interesting to see if gamified "mandatory education" could achieve the same level of results (remember that participation in KPMG Globerunner was optional).  Regardless, there appears to be an opportunity here to make mandatory training and education a lot more fun!