Leveling Up: Best Practices for Gamification in Training

Key takeaways

• A 2024 study found a positive correlation between game mechanics such as points, leaderboards, and badges and knowledge retention.
• LinkedIn reports seven in 10 people say learning makes them feel more connected to their organization, and 53% of Gen Z value learning for career growth versus 37% of other generations at work.
• Intellum’s 2023 State of Education Initiative Ownership Report, based on 445 education professionals, found 42% look forward to work each day, falling to 10% among those who lack the right training and knowledge.
• Gamified training draws on six game design elements: goals, feedback, accessibility, rewards, community, and fun.
• Duolingo reached half a billion dollars in annual revenue with quest-structured courses that unlock experience points based on learner performance.

If you’ve ever tracked steps on your phone, kept a streak going on Duolingo, or completed a summer reading challenge, you’ve participated in a game—one with tangible, real-life benefits. When we gamify our lives, we make it easier to stay active, develop new skills, and so much more.

In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of gamification in training. Learn how to incorporate game design into your existing training program, so you can make it easier for your audience to learn, retain, and apply new information. We’ll also share key features, benefits, and examples of gamification in training done right.

What Is Gamification in Training?

Gamification in training is the process of applying game design principles to workplace education to incentivize learning, improve knowledge retention, and achieve greater business outcomes. Gamified training takes many forms, but is most often associated with digital learning, such as courses, quizzes, certifications, and webinars.

Why Gamify Learning?

Gamification in corporate training may seem counterintuitive. Aren’t games a leisure activity? Do they have a meaningful purpose in the workplace?

The answer is surprisingly simple: Games are fun and thrilling. When implemented thoughtfully, gamification elements can motivate your target audience and keep them glued to what they’re reading, watching, or listening to. For your education team, that means more opportunities to teach new skills and deepen existing knowledge.

Benefits of Game-Based Learning

Here are the biggest benefits of gamification in training:

Greater engagement

As an education leader, you know that your work offers value. According to LinkedIn, seven in 10 people say learning makes them feel more connected to their organization. Consider another finding—that Gen Z values learning for career growth significantly more (53%) than any other generation at work (37%)—and the value prop couldn’t be clearer.

Gamification in training is a great way to further those engagement efforts. By making learning a tactile, interactive experience, you give users the agency to learn at their own pace and skill level. Consider that games are also fun, and you have a recipe for education that improves learner engagement and decreases drop-off rates.

Better knowledge retention

In a 2024 study, researchers found a positive correlation between certain game mechanics—including points, leaderboards, and badges—and knowledge retention. It makes practical sense, too: When you gamify training in the workplace, you break down complex topics into easier, more attainable goals. You also provide meaningful feedback (e.g., a passing grade, a high score) that encourages future learning and development.

Key Elements of Gamified Learning

Achieving a gamified learning experience doesn’t happen by accident. To implement gamification properly, it’s important to understand some fundamental elements of game design.

You don’t need to be Shigeru Miyamoto to make a compelling gamified experience. Here’s a crash course of nine crucial game elements to incorporate into your customer, partner, or employee training.

Goals

Gamification in training also benefits from a clear set of objectives. Say you’re creating employee education to enable teams to better sell your products. When building your curriculum, consider not just the end goal (e.g., “sell more products”), but also the smaller milestones that’ll get you there. 

For instance, your training could consist of modules such as:

• The art of cold calling
• Writing effective emails
• How to close your first deal
• Expansion talk tracks

...And so on. The point is this: players don’t conquer games in a day, and teams don’t tackle their workloads overnight. To help employees learn effectively, it’s important to celebrate their progress (no matter how small) and provide consistent goals to work toward. 

People need to know what the goals are, the order of the goals, what it takes to achieve those goals, and why those goals are important.

Rules

Rules are required for effective gamification. The rules should tie back to rewards.

Think in terms of “if, then.” If a learner does X, they get Y. If you fail to “pot” your ball, then the opposing player gets a turn. In a learning environment, you might have a scenario where if the learner completes all the interactive elements within an eLearning module, then the next module unlocks.

Feedback

Learner engagement feeds off these positive and negative loops—and gamification in training is no different. As you build eLearning for your audience, consider what types of feedback will encourage improvement. One common form of feedback is a badge system, where users collect a visual certificate upon completing a course or certification. Progress bars, daily streaks, and even a simple “Nice job!” are all additional ways to keep learners on the right track.

Feedback is a game element used to help people understand what they need to do to earn a reward. Feedback can also be used to discourage certain behaviors.

In a learning context, this might look like a red X indicating that the learner chose a wrong answer during an assessment. You might then offer corrective feedback that lets them know where they can go back and review materials to get the correct answer next time.

Accessibility

“Accessible design is good design.” When we create experiences that reflect the rich diversity of our learners, we open the door for all people to thrive.

Game design shares that same philosophy. Your training must do more than inform or engage—if the masses can’t appreciate it, the few likely won’t either. Thankfully, there’s a wealth of guidelines on how to create accessible eLearning as you build out your program.

Rewards

No matter how accessible and intuitive your training is, there needs to be an incentive to opt in. In many cases, that incentive is an intrinsic drive to upskill in one’s job or career. However, that’s not always the case—especially when educating audiences outside your organization, like clients or channel partners.

That’s where extrinsic incentives come into play. Gamification is built on the philosophy of rewarding participation—whether by letting users earn points, redeem gift cards, or earn fancy titles for a virtual avatar. Ultimately, there’s no better reward than the joy of learning, but you can supplement that thrill with the right carrot.

Incentives should be tied to learning objectives. After all, you want people to learn, not game the system for a reward.

While surprising and delighting your learner with something they didn’t expect can be nice, rewards for learning should be explicit. Hidden rewards are proven to be less effective, so communicate upfront what's at stake and what it takes to earn it.

Levels

Levels can be used to indicate progression or status. You see this used in some learning environments as a leaderboard. You also see this in advancing credentials, like Salesforce Trailhead offers.

Time

Time can be used as a motivator—whether that’s a countdown or a limited-time-only scenario. For example, in many digital games, there might be time-bound assignments: “Log in daily for 10 XP.” HubSpot Academy uses time-bound gamification when they offer World Certification Week. For one week, HubSpot Academy donates $5 to charity for every certification awarded.

In learning, countdowns might take the form of time-based assessments, where you have a limited amount of time to complete the assessment.

Community

Community-based learning is only becoming more popular, and Millennials and Gen Z are in the driver’s seat. To make your education truly enticing, see that it incorporates gamification that rewards conversation. Leaderboards allow your users to compare scores and compete for first place. Likewise, users can share badges online, attracting new faces to your program.

Fun

Former Nintendo executive Reggie Fils-Aimé once said, “If [the game’s] not fun, why bother?” Of course, amusement likely isn’t your primary consideration when building gamification in training. Training is often decidedly “unfun” (e.g., sensitivity compliance training). 

This isn’t an exhaustive list of game elements, but a few ideas that you can quickly and easily apply to get started.

5 Steps to Get Started With Gamification in Training

If you’re ready to dig in and get started with gamified learning experiences, check out five tips from Dr. Julia Huprich, former VP of Learning Science at Intellum (shared in a previous episode of our Underscore webinar series). Ready to introduce gamification into your learning? Here are five steps to get started.

Step 1: Establish goals for your gamification plan

One of the biggest mistakes people make when gamifying learning is simply adding game elements. But what we really want to do is start with the end in mind: What trackable, measurable behavior do you want to impact?

With your goal in mind, you can find ways to encourage and reward actions that lead toward that behavior change. For example, maybe you’re trying to improve meeting efficiency, and you’re trying to instill a set of behaviors to accomplish that goal. In this example, awarding badges to learners who complete a course on hosting more efficient meetings is not going to have much of an impact. Instead, rewards need to tie to organizational and learning goals. So rather than award badges, you might recognize and reward employees who take recommended actions: preparing an agenda, taking and sharing notes, starting and ending on time, etc. 

Step 2: Identify desired learner behaviors

Once you know what your intended goal is, it’s time to identify which behaviors are most likely to lead to that desired outcome.

One way to figure this out is by analyzing your most successful and least successful learners (whether customers, partners, or employees). What are they doing differently? Which behaviors are most likely, or least likely, to lead to success? 

For example, language learning app Duolingo realized that if someone logged in everyday and did one thing, that was a successful user. So instead of focusing on badges or completion, they focused on gamifying login through login streaks.

Step 3: Profile users

But what about motivation? To drive engagement, we must understand what inspires and motivates our learners to learn.

Gamification designer Andrzej Marczewski’s Hexad model sorts users into six types, each driven by a different motivation:

Why is it important to understand motivation? Because motivation works both ways: If you don't know the player type of your audience, you can demotivate them. For example, Socializers wouldn't be motivated by an individual leaderboard, but a leaderboard based on groups. They want to be recognized as contributing to the team, not as an individual.

Step 4: Select effective game elements

There are a number of different game elements you can bring into play (see what I did there?) to increase engagement. The key elements covered above, from goals and rules to levels and time, are your options. Choose the ones that fit the behaviors you identified in step 2 and the learner motivations you profiled in step 3.

Step 5: Launch your gamification learning experience

Once you’ve identified your goals, intended audience, and the game elements you want to incorporate, consider testing your gamified learning experience with a pilot group. To start, you might focus on one user persona and one desired behavior change.

This will help you get both qualitative and quantitative feedback on how it’s working:

• Is the measurable behavior you’re trying to change changing? 
• Are your pilot testers engaged and enjoying the experience? 

Use the insights to refine your gamification strategy before launching to a broader audience—then choose the next gamified element to introduce. 

The best way to get a quick win is to focus on what will really move the needle. As Dr. Julia shared, “It’s not about doing something, it’s about doing the right thing.”

Examples of Gamification in Training

Want some healthy inspiration as you explore gamification for your training needs? Here are some companies that make it look easy.

LinkedIn

For many, LinkedIn is a place to update your resume, publish thought leadership, and celebrate work anniversaries. But many of LinkedIn’s best features lie beyond the news feed. LinkedIn Learning offers a comprehensive education platform dedicated to helping workers upskill for today’s roles and tomorrow’s opportunities. After completing courses, you share your new skills with colleagues and peers, encouraging others to do the same.

Duolingo

The keys to Duolingo’s success are its slick user interface and smart incentives. Setting up an account is breezy, and users can pick a language and jump into the action in just a few minutes. Courses follow a quest-like structure—complete an intro lesson to unlock more advanced learning. As you proceed, you’ll unlock experience points (XP) based on your performance.

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It’s a decidedly game-like way to approach education—and that’s the point. While it’s rare to see a company invest as fully in gamification as Duolingo, the results speak for themselves.

Deliver Best-in-Class Gamified Learning With Intellum

With Intellum’s learning management system, there’s no guesswork. Our reputation-based gamification isn’t built on arbitrary points or awards, but on real-based skills that naturally encourage people to improve. Encourage your audience to build their reputation, earn new credentials, and redeem prizes, all while keeping the focus on learning.