93% Of HR and L&D Professionals Say Applicability and Engagement Are Essential for Effective Online Training

Gamelearn’s latest report, Serious Games, Serious Impact, is out and it’s an insight into the present state of affairs in the field of corporate training. The report takes an in-depth look into the current trends and challenges for skill development based on a global survey answered by over 1,000 HR and L&D professionals. Results reveal the main challenge with corporate training online is finding ways to keep employees engaged with learning content that is applicable to their daily lives.

As we can see from the answers gathered from Gamelearn’s survey, many professionals have moved towards game-based learning to try and solve these challenges. When asked which are the most important factors to consider when selecting an online training course, they choose applicability (53%) and engagement (40%). Game-based learning is a combination of storytelling, gamification, applicable content, simulations, and personalized feedback, a theory that can be used to create many different products. Training video games, also known as serious games, are one of the products that have come to the forefront in online training for their ability to keep employees engaged throughout the course.

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Another trend that’s gaining traction in corporate training is employee-driven development. 60% of those surveyedagree that providing employees with open access to an ample catalog of training courses is key to achieving a culture of self-development. With a wide variety of serious games to cover different skills, you don’t put a ceiling on a professional’s development.

Innovation has also become a priority for many HR and L&D departments. Professionals consulted consider simulations (30%) and video games (22%) to be two of the best choices to innovate in their training plans. However, it’s possible to have both of these options with serious games, as they are video games with integrated simulations that allow employees to learn by doing.

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HR Consultants and Instructional Designers were also surveyed. Their main objectives when planning their training catalogs are standing out from the competition (24%) and satisfying their clients’ needs (21%). Here we can see how game-based learning and serious games could help a business provide high-impact training that meets everyone’s needs. 52% of these professionals say that using game-based learning in their courses would increase the number of their clients, due to the lack of competitors offering this type of training, while 36% say it would increase existing clients’ demand for courses. And serious games are a cost-effective, quick, high-quality product to do all of this.

The complete report developed by Gamelearn can be downloaded for free from today. It also includes relevant case studies of organizations putting game-based learning into action, which metrics are most useful to evaluate the effectiveness of a training course, and how to leverage corporate training to improve business performance.

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