Considering the fact that the average customer loyalty rate is only 5%, it takes little imagination to see the incredible benefits to a business if it is able to give that number a significant raise.

Indeed, customer loyalty, it’s fair to say, is one of the most important aspects in the success of a business; returning customers are the bread and butter of an organization, regardless of its size.

Consider some companies with fierce customer loyalty. Apple, for example, still has one of the most devout customer bases and they have, in effect, a generation of customers who have grown up with Apple products. Customers know the product inside out and considering a change of brand is almost unthinkable.

Though Apple is a company in a million and in many ways unique, there are many ways to carve out a loyal base of customers. The benefits are simple, but here is a small selection:

Steady Cash Flow – With a loyal customer base businesses can be more certain of a steady cash flow due to returning clients. Expansion, growth and a secure financial future are the dividends.

Referrals – Loyal clients send others your way. Simply put, clients are loyal because they think the product or service you provide is of a high standard and a fair price. Happy customers spread the word so that others march right to your door. This type of brand advocacy is worth far more valuable than even the best marketing.

Predictability – Customer behavior is far more predictable when a company has customer loyalty. Planning inventory and stock is less risky as sales forecasts are based less on possibility and more on past experience.

The customer loyalty course is designed to explain how to build a loyal fan base. To do this, the course breaks down a fair complicated process into easily comprehended stages:

Introduction – The course begins outlining the case for making customer loyalty a priority for your business. It explains how prosperity in many countries has provided many more options for consumers, and consequently, customer loyalty is on the decline.

Consumers are happy to leave one company for the benefits that new customers are offered at many others and this has created a focus on gaining new customers, but all too frequently, at the cost of losing those who are loyal.

Why is Customer Loyalty Important? – The course then goes on to explain why a focus on bringing in new customers should not be at the cost of customer loyalty. This message is underscored by revelations such as; gaining a new customer costs five times that of retaining a current one. But the reasons for a customer to stay loyal to you are not the same as those that attract new clients.

So then, what are the best methods to ensure loyalty in your customers?

Turn Customers into Loyal Fans – This section explains what does and does not work in creating a loyal fan base. For example, do most consumers treat reward cards as a way to express their brand loyalty or as a way to save money? It’s likely the latter reason. Rather than discounts or freebies, superb customer service is the best way to retain customers.

This section is also broken into three smaller parts to instruct users on the methods to improve their customer service:

Power of Surprise – Leverage the enjoyment of surprises by offering little thank you gifts, or spending time actually searching out your client to say hello.

Appreciation is Key – Acknowledge your appreciation by simply saying thank you. Touches like these stay with people and aren’t common. Stand out from the crowd.

Acknowledge Mistakes – When you provide a service that doesn’t meet customer expectation, listen and improve. Offer a small gesture of apology and they’ll likely return.

Final Summary – This section quickly ties together the threads of the course and asks how you can implement them into the business where you work.

This course covers many aspects of customer loyalty, and to do this it includes a variety of resources for the learner.

The videos act as the engine of the course to drive the learner to further appreciation of why customer loyalty is so important and how to create it. Other resources sure-up the message, but the videos are the main player. Use these to drive your understanding.

The four-page customer loyalty fact sheet feature the foundations of the course message. Without the researched facts that are provided in these pages the course would be only conjecture. All the hard details can be found right here; everything’s spelled out in black and white.

The course description is a simple one-page document that signposts the way. It allows users to easily navigate through the course and find their place. Use this if you get lost!

The market’s shifting sands always offer new customers benefits for pulling up anchor and heading elsewhere. While it’s important to gain further custom and bring new clients in, this shouldn’t be sought at the expense of loyal customers.

Like keeping a partner in your personal life, it is important to show customers that you care. Without reminders every now and again, the reasons behind why a client should use your service, the loyalty of your customer may falter.

Though rates of customer loyalty are lower than ever, those that stay are also worth more than before. Loyalty breeds trust, and with it a bond that runs deeper than the bottom line.


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Customer loyalty: How to turn your customers into fans

Onboarding is an incredibly important task to ensure that customers are retained. Without onboarding, a customer may feel adrift in their new service, not knowing how to take full advantage of the service – or they might feel neglected entirely. This is a huge error, with a recent Harvard Business Review study pointing out that 85% of executives said successful customer onboarding is vital for long-term customer loyalty.

But it’s important to remember that although the end goal is to generate and retain customers to increase profitability, this shouldn’t be your primary aim when organizing your onboarding process. It should be clear what you can offer the client in return for their custom, that they can achieve the desired outcome. This is where retention comes from.

Online learning is a great part of this, and in this article we’ll address why.

Before we get to the meat of the subject, let us first take a few moments to ensure we understand its main term. So, what do we mean by onboarding?

Onboarding is the name given to a process of familiarizing and integrating employees, or in this case clients or customers, with the products or services that your company provides.

The onboarding process can be seen in two main ways.

Employees – New employees can be taught, via online learning or other means, the rules, regulations and expectations of a company. They can be informed of the steps that they should take in carrying out the tasks of their job. Their progress can be checked, and appraisals are given to give them clarity on their position.

Clients and customers – This is very different. Onboarding with customers means that a company is able to exhibit its value to a customer in such a way that the customer considers their service or product worthwhile enough to continue using and ideally, to build a long term relationship with.

Why online learning is so useful in gaining more customers

Now the concept of onboarding is understood, we can look at the reasons as to why online learning is so effective in gaining more customers. While it is only one of many ways to attract clients to a business, online learning is perhaps the best method. There are many uses of online learning and multimedia in the onboarding process.

Time is becoming expensive and this means that people want to gain a lot by only sacrificing a small amount of their time.

Consider the recent crazes in physical fitness training. High-intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Microworkouts are both examples of gaining the maximum result in the minimum amount of time.

Online learning, being mobile and broken down into manageable chunks, is the educational equivalent. Customers can learn on-the-go and whenever they want, making use of their “dead time”. In turn, this leads to greater long-term use of learning resources and better retention of customers.

The easy use of goal setting abilities is another feature that makes online learning a huge boon in onboarding more customers. Facebook’s use of likes or Twitters re-tweets system makes use of human biology by rewarding us for using the product. Likes and retweets are effectively awards that we desire.

Likewise, the goals that eLearning offers (think of DuoLingo’s Ingots system) drive our desire to reach them. We want to achieve the next badge by finising the course. In this way, customers can be tempted to continue using the service.

This is useful for educational tools as it allows students to really learn, but it is also a fantastic way to retain customers after onboarding.

Colorful videos full of concise information that clearly tell a user exactly what they need is a very appealing offer. Rather than sift through mountains of text or FAQs, videos and exercises offer a way to learn and then test that learning, in a simple and unfussy style.

Potential customers do not want to have to work to access a service or find information. eLearning services serve it straight to the customer.

Online learning has a clear and immediate impact on customers because it provides value to them. Clients are more likely to pay for services if they believe it improves them in some way, as eLearning does.

Online learning courses minimize time to value for a business, a very precious benefit.

So there you have it. Because of the nature of learning courses, a small amount – for example, free access to the first video of a course – can be offered to whet the whistle of potential customers. You’ve demonstrated your product and customers are happier to pay for a product they know works.

To make sure that online learning becomes the force for onboarding that it can, it is necessary that your resources are varied and high in quality.

Another important point to remember in the onboarding process is to continue communication even after a customer has onboarded successfully. With online learning, this could mean suggesting similarly themed eLearning courses or send occasional quizzes to test a customer’s knowledge. It is vital that customers do not feel forgotten about.

Finally, asking for feedback from successfully onboarded customers is a good way to learn about the successes and failures of your online learning process. What did they enjoy? What did they find too easy, or not related to the product?

Only by asking these questions will you be able to perfect the onboarding process and see the value of online learning in onboarding and retaining customers.

Using online learning for customer onboarding

Keeping track of your training programs can be tough work, especially if you have a mix of in-person workshops and programs combined with an online component. Not any more though, thanks to Go1!

Training managers have had their work cut out for them as they have had to keep track of all of the in-person programs that they run, as well as checking that against how their team has been going with their online training. Traditionally the two training types have been kept separate.

As we recently discussed in a session with Micro-Learning expert Julie Watson, online learning has been the go-to tool for businesses across the world in recent times. As online course took center stage, this meant that the more traditional workplace training formats, including in person workshops and day long seminars, took a back seat.
Over the past few years we have seen the rise in popularity of blended learning. Pushing to mix up the classroom and online learning, blended learning is the most effective and ideal training scenario for most organizations. But managing these programs, and ensuring that employees are meeting their requirements has been a challenge.

We are excited to be able to bring all of your training, online and offline, together in one platform with our new live event tools in Go1.

As part of the recent launch of Go1 2017, you are now able to include an in-person event or workshop as a part of a course. Simply create a new module, but instead of adding your learning content via the “Add an Item” button as you normally would, click the 3 dots in the top right hand corner of the module block, and select the “Add Event” option.

Go1 Wvents GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

From here you can enter your starting and end dates and times, the location information for the event, and how many seats are available for learners to attend. You may wish to run multiple events in this module with the option for users to select from a range of dates and times to accommodate all users.

Go1 GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Once you have created your event you can also add any additional information related to the in person training to the model. This could be required reading, information that learners are to review after the session, or event a follow up assessment to see how much the attendees learned.

Once the events are completed, Administrators can mark the attendance for all attendees to ensure that everyone required has completed the in-person event.

Traditionally, after completing a training workshop or seminar your employees head back to their desks and within days will forget that they even attended a session until the next workshop rolls around - which is some cases can be up to one year!

By including your in person training events as a part of an online course you can start to build a culture of sustained learning. This means that both before and after the workshop takes place the employee can start working through a course or series of courses, and the in person event can really focus on covering the most impactful elements that be delivered more effectily in a workshop setting.

This process also means that the days of whole day training events can stay in the past. Shorter but more frequent events coupled with ongoing short courses can allow employees to complete a short amount of training each week, every week. Over time this results in a more in depth understanding of the topic and a more engaged team.

By adopting this sustained learning model, you are building a culture of learning and continual development in your team, which ultimately leads to a more productive orgranisation.


Include in-person training with your online courses

It’s official – social media is everywhere, with the majority of people in the United States using it. If we’re not liking a Facebook update then we’re probably Instagramming our newest holiday photo. But what happens when our use of social media enters the professional realm?

There are now a growing number of social media mishaps that can play havoc on the reputation of businesses and individuals. With too many examples to name, this is an issue that organizations need to get right, so that they don’t fall victim to a mistimed hashtag or unintended Tweet.

If you still need convincing, then here is a quick list of the benefits derived from social media awareness:

What is and isn’t acceptable – issues like bullying in the workplace can become uncontrollable problems if taken over to social media. This blurring of lines between professional and private spheres makes these sorts of problems very difficult to resolve.

Keep a clean reputation – when a problematic tweet is sent that includes a company name or logo, a company might unfairly reap the consequences. Keep a good reputation by setting clear guidelines.

Hold on a second – explain how private and public spheres are so porous now and that what a person might post can be seen by anyone – including bosses. Remove the risk of error by understanding simple rules. Before posting employees should give themselves a second to think – do they really want colleagues to see this?

Social media is unavoidable. It’s likely that a company uses Twitter or Facebook to promote itself and communicate with possible clients, and if that’s not the case, then your colleagues will almost certainly use social media to some degree.

And social media has blurred the lines between public and private life. They are, to some extent, now one and the same. It is therefore very important to understand what is and what is not acceptable to post on platforms that are public.

Not only can social media mishaps cost money and hurt the reputation of a company but personal attacks carried out via social media can cause a great deal of suffering to staff and destroy workplace unity.

Social Media Awareness training is a valuable tool to reduce the possibilities of these dramatic problems and offer leverage for a company should a social media mistake be made.

The use of social media shows no sign of falling away, so it is important that you act now to protect yourself and your business.

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.


Social media awareness is essential for any high-performing organisation. As such, we'll analyse what you need to know about social media awareness.

Why social media awareness matters

Social media awareness is essential for any high-performing organisation. As such, we'll analyse what you need to know about social media awareness. 

If you’ve read our previous article on the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace, you’ll know that the statistics speak for themselves when it comes to EQ. This is because research shows that emotional intelligence is one of the most important factors in maintaining successful relationships – both personal and professional.

Employees with highly developed emotional intelligence, or EQ, are far more likely to be successful in their careers, professional working relationships and personal lives. Did you know that 90% of top performers have high levels of EQ? And can expect to earn $29,000 more annually than employees with lower levels of EQ? These individuals are also more effective when it comes to handling conflict, performing well under pressure, and leading and managing teams – all of which are very desirable traits for an employee.

Fortunately, your level of emotional intelligence can be developed and improved over time. As with other soft skills in the workplace, such as active listening or effective communication, you can learn how to develop and use your EQ, to improve working relationships and help keep your emotions in positive balance.

As Travis Bradberry, author of the best-selling book ‘Emotional Intelligence 2.0’, explains,  “emotional intelligence is the other kind of smart.” When you start to develop your EQ, you’ll notice a greater ability to monitor your own and others’ feelings and emotions – and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions.

Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to know exactly what was needed in any situation? It may have been a colleague who instinctively knew if you needed some alone time. Or a manager who could always sense when you needed a little extra support.

These people most likely had high levels of EQ. Because social awareness and empathy are a large part of emotional intelligence, these kinds of employees and managers bring a comforting and comfortable presence to the workplace. They know how to recognize and manage their own emotions, without becoming overwhelmed by them, and are therefore able to be more productive, effective and happy workers.

Develop Your Emotional Intelligence Through eLearning

Keen to get started on developing your own levels of EQ? Why not start by learning more about emotional intelligence in the workplace, through the short online course Emotional Intelligence.

During this interactive eLearning course, you’ll learn how to improve and use your emotional intelligence for better workplace outcomes. The course will give you an insight into the different elements that combine to form emotional intelligence. While there are various approaches and theoretical models associated with emotional intelligence, there are four fundamental ways you can develop your EQ and boost your career:

Self-awareness – recognizing and identifying your emotions, reducing their intensity and allowing you to manage emotions more easily

Self-management – learning that your emotions and behavior come from you, not from anyone else, and you are responsible for them

Social awareness – paying close attention to how you’re interacting with others, through body language, active listening and asking questions

Relationship management – developing the ability to listen, empathize and respect others to build positive working relationships.

As you can see, by taking this course you’ll be on your way to becoming a much happier and more successful employee. You’ll feel more confident, empowered and effective in your actions and relationships, with these positive benefits also overflowing into your personal life.

Everyone, at all levels of an organization, will benefit from taking this short eLearning course. Enrol today, and get started online, all in the convenience of your own home – in just 30 minutes!

Improve your emotional intelligence and boost your career

Do you often feel as though there’s simply not enough hours in the day? Like no matter how hard you try, you can’t quite get through your never-ending list of things to do? You’re not alone. Trying to stay on top of work, life admin, family commitments and relationships can be challenging, to say the least.

Why is it then, that some people seem able to achieve much more with their time than others – even when they lead incredibly busy lives? The secret is in good time management. These people know how to maximize and manage their time. They know how to avoid the pitfalls of procrastination, stay on track and be productive, and keep their work and social lives in balance.

If you’re tired of feeling snowed under at work, want to improve your work-life balance, or are keen to boost your productivity, you’ll benefit from learning how to take charge of your time. By mastering this ability, you’ll soon be able to better organize, plan and prioritize tasks, allowing you to make the most of the hours in your day.

The Benefits of Taking Charge of Your Time

Time management is high on the list of desirable skills for employees, across all industries and job descriptions. This is because how you manage your own time has a direct impact on your employer and the business. Employees who are able to manage their individual workload, maintain productivity, and meet targets and deadlines without stress are invaluable to any organization.

Mastering time management is also essential for your own wellbeing. Running on panic and adrenaline each day is a sure-fire way to end up burning out at work, leading to high stress levels and low productivity rates. Holding onto perfectionism can also be a road block to productivity – while perfectionists may appear to look super busy, the need to do everything perfectly can have a negative impact on their ability to deliver and achieve. It’s vital to learn how to proactively manage your workload without procrastination or perfectionism, for your mental, emotional and physical health.

It’s not just your own life that’s affected by poor time management. When work is particularly demanding, our social and family lives are also likely to suffer. And when we’re stressed, it causes havoc on our close relationships. Time management takes discipline, planning, and a positive attitude. When you start to make improvements in this area, and feel more relaxed and on top of things, you’ll find that your relationships with workmates, friends, family members and partners become much smoother.

Learn Time Management Skills Through eLearning

Ready to get some help with your time management? The good news is, there are plenty of resources and techniques available to help you improve your time management skills. These days, we’re very lucky to have the convenience of eLearning, allowing us to easily study and complete online courses on our laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Why not start by taking a look at the short online course Productivity and Time Management? This 30-minute eLearning course is ideal for anyone who wants to improve their time management skills and get more out of their day. By the end of the course, you’ll have the skills, confidence and knowledge to start taking charge of your own time, once and for all.

The interactive online course covers the four essential pillars to time management, explaining why they work, how you can incorporate them into your work and the benefits these techniques will bring to your life and career.

The time-management techniques explained in this course will help you improve your ability to function more effectively – even when dealing with tight deadlines, high pressure work environments and multi-tasking. You’ll also learn how to avoid procrastination, to help you maintain your focus and productivity.

This exciting animated explainer course allows you to learn at your own pace, at a time and place that’s convenient to you. While it’s up to you how you use your time traveling to and from work, you could even think about using your commute to focus on your professional development. Your daily bus or train trip presents an excellent opportunity for individuals to learn new skills, such as improving time management and productivity. Enroll and get started online today.


How to improve your time management skills

Online training provider Go1 is partnering with learning management systems provider Totara to provide Totara partners with comprehensive training solutions for its customers.

Through the partnership, Go1 will work with Totara partners to create custom training content packages to help deliver the best learning and training outcomes.

As part of the agreement Totara’s partners will have access to Go1’s content which includes compliance training, soft skill training and personal development courses, as well as the ability to book in-person training such as first aid or leadership courses.

oThrough accessing Go1’s content, partners will have the ability to open up new revenue streams to new and existing customers through content sales, decrease sales cycles and implementation timelines with readily available training content, improve sales conversion with content tailored to target industries and verticals, as well as increase client retention by providing a broader and more comprehensive solution.

There are many synergies between Go1 and Totara, the main being a strong desire to help companies train and upskill their staff.

Andrew Barnes, CEO and cofounder of Go1 said, "The decision to partner with Totara was an obvious one for us. Our missions are similar - to help individuals and companies learn and enhance their skills, whether for compliance or personal development goals”.

“Through this partnership we are able to offer Totara’s partners a comprehensive training solution for their customers," Mr Barnes said.

Richard Wyles CEO of Totara said the major appeal for Totara is the way in which Go1’s content is updated automatically by its expert course authors, saving hundreds of hours a month. Users are automatically notified when there is an update, which enables them to stay compliant and up to date with regulations in their sector.

"We’re very excited about this new content partnership. It gives our customers access to a wide variety of high-quality training content that is constantly kept up to date with regulatory changes in each jurisdiction. Go1 works with our customers to find the best content for them."

Go1 partners with Totara to provide comprehensive training solutions

If you’re involved in the learning or training space you’ve probably been hearing a lot about micro-learning recently. But how much do you actually know about what it’s all about, or how to to start implement it into your next training program?

To help you understand more we asked micro-learning expert Julie Watson to come in and walk you through the basics, as well giving you a stack of tips that you can apply directly to your training programs. With more that 20 years experience in developing more productive behaviors, Julie provides some great insight into how you can take your training to the next level.


This discussion covers a range of topics including how you can get started with micro-learning in your organisation, how some major banks have implemented successful programs that have resulted in a dramatic culture change, embracing informal learning, and the key elements required to make gamification work.

One of the key elements to making any learning program successful is having buy in from all members within your organisation, and to do that you must make learning fun and experiential says Julie.

“Embrace the values of the organisation, as well as the individuals.”

Getting started with micro-learning takes time and planning. As Julie says, “Just because it’s micro, that doesn’t mean that it’s just going to happen.” Company Leaders need to invest time into developing programs and creating a culture of learning and development amongst their employees. Having individual teams taking ownership of their training is a great way to get everyone involved.

Micro-learning can easily be utilised for all elements of training within a business. It’s especially great when coupled with workshops, and used as the underlying continual learning process to keep employees engaged on a periodic bases. It’s not there to replace traditional learning elements, it’s there to support them.

It’s less intrusive nature means that providing sustained training is not an intrusive and time consuming experience like it may have been in the past. Where training programs of the past may have required large chunks of time sitting in a boardroom, we can now drastically reduce the length of in person training, and provide a blended learning solution to allow a micro-learning solution to continue the learning process once the workshop is complete.

With gamification being one of the biggest buzzwords in the learning industry at the moment, Julie gives us her top tips on how to create a successful gamified learning program by maintain relevance and not rushing learners through the process.

We hope that you get some useful information out of the discussion and would love to hear from you if you have any tips that you’d like to share with our readers!

What you need to know about Micro-Learning with Julie Watson

Today’s job market is not like that of yesteryear. There are fewer jobs for life, competition is fiercer than ever, and the pressure to hit targets is a frequent source of stress. In fact, work is the number one source of stress for most people. The need for a resilient mind – one that’s able to overcome challenges and face tough tasks with a can-do attitude is key.

But this is not just true for your working life, either. Of course, in our private and personal lives there will always be bumps in the road – some of which might be devastating to come to terms with – and so resilience can improve your mental health too.

There are ways to build resilience that can provide help over time. Yet one of the best ways is with the helping hand of an online course, guiding you with professional experience towards a goal that is vital yet difficult to attain.

Reasons to develop your resilience at work are:

Being able to bounce back – There is nothing in work, nor life generally, that is worth having if it’s easy to obtain. We all know this, yet many of us are frequently terrorized by the possibility of difficulty and failure. But failure is necessary to learn from, if you are resilient enough to understand this. Resilience allows you to move forward, not give up all together.

To be committed – A lack of resilience will cause people to give up when they’re finding something difficult. Commitment is all about dealing with adversity, acknowledging that work can sometimes be difficult, and continuing undeterred.

Being able to learn from mistakes – When a task has gotten the better of you, it’s only in trying again that you can put what you learned from failing, into practice the next time. This is a highly sought after skill, and one that is a real asset to have.

Cognitive distortion – This section explains how our brains like to spot and form patterns, but that, unfortunately for us, they don’t always see the right things.

For example, we assume that the angry reaction that our manager had this morning is because we did our job poorly, but perhaps they were just having a bad day; we don’t have all the facts we need to make a proper judgement. Cognitive distortion is the phenomena whereby our minds cause us to believe in something that is not actually true. For many, this is where doubt creeps in.

Cognitive restructuring – This next section begins the process of developing resilience by firstly restructuring our response to a negative situation, and then using it to our advantage. This middle section uses the book Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberg and Christine Padesky as a general guide. This is broken into chunks:

Identify the situation – When a situation arises that has a negative effect, take a second to describe the situation to yourself.

Identify automatic thoughts – Be conscious of the automatic assumptions you have made, which are frequently negative. For example, “I’m not good enough”.

Find supportive evidence – What concrete evidence do you have to support those automatic assumptions? If you can’t find anything, your assumptions might not be correct.

Find contradictory evidence – Is there any evidence to contradict those automatic thoughts? For example, “I hit my targets every week.”

Take a balanced view – Speak to a colleague to hear another opinion.

It’s important to develop a level of resilience due to the strained nature of working environments. Currently, deadlines are tight and budgets stretched, so nerves understandably fray. To ensure you’re not overwhelmed by situations that may be confrontational, resilience is key.

A lack of resilience will undermine your performance. It will cause you to second-guess yourself and assume that you’ll fail. Furthermore, those above you are unlikely to look kindly on a refusal to commit.

A resilient person is more able to cope in both personal and private life. You can be more resilient too – it’s all in the mind.


Developing resilience: change your thinking

Do you think games are just for entertainment? Or only for kids? Think again. These days, many eLearning projects contain elements of game play, with certain strategies used in gamification being very effective when applied to learning environments.

In fact, gamification is a very powerful tool that can help to engage, interest and educate users of all ages. Games can be successfully used for many corporate training needs, such as induction processes, onboarding, compliance, professional development and behavioral change.

When used as a component of staff training, games can also help employees to stay motivated, learn new skills, improve existing skills and retain knowledge. Let’s look at how gamification strategies can be successfully incorporated into eLearning projects for the corporate sector.

Applying gamification strategy to eLearning

Gamification is about much more than playing games, relating also to the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications. When used in eLearning, gamification can help learners to become more active participants in the online course, appealing to the competitive and fun nature in many individuals.

You can incorporate game play into your eLearning course to encourage employees to practice situations and challenges in the online environment. This will help them hone their new skills before putting them to use in the workplace.

Defining your goals like a game developer

When designing and implementing an eLearning project, you want to be sure you’re getting a good ROI – return on investment. Gamification often uses a monetization strategy, which can be successfully applied to corporate training.

Cindy McCabe, senior gamification/instructional designer, looks at the very popular Candy Crush game to explain the monetization strategy. As McCabe says, “ROI is the ‘holy grail’ for corporate training and performance improvement, [as] it's often hard to define and measure success.”

Game developers are understandably reluctant to spend a lot of money on development if they don’t have a strong hint that the game will be a success. A monetization strategy helps you to define a clear set of goals and a clear way of measuring against those goals. Take a leaf out of the game developer’s book and be sure you know how you’re going to define and measure goals in corporate training.

Let’s look at McCabe’s example of Candy Crush gamification strategy again. With the Candy Crush game, we can see that not everything happens within the game interface itself – players are also encouraged to connect with their friends through Facebook, for example. This helps players earn additional lives, and importantly, it also serves to “extend the game event beyond what's happening on screen.”

In the same way, you can think about how your eLearning course can extend to social media or productivity tools. This tactic works to further involve and engage participants (in this case, your employees) in the learning material.

As participants become more engaged, it also helps to improve the amount of knowledge and content that is being absorbed and retained. Just as players become more adept and skilled at playing games over time, your learners will become more comfortable and fluent with the course content through game play. They can then translate that knowledge into performance when they return to the workplace from training.

Adopting gamification strategies for learning

Christopher Pappas, founder of the eLearning Industry’s Network, is also strongly in favor of adopting gamification strategies for learning,

Pappas refers to the rise of gamification in corporate training environments, as learning professionals are now recognizing the importance of gamification in this area. “Games may offer employees the opportunity to acquire and cultivate skill sets, while empowering them and putting them in control of their own eLearning experience via increased engagement,” Pappas says.

He cites promising figures relating to participants in gamified eLearning experiences, with learners demonstrating:

14% increase in skill-based-knowledge assessments

11% increase in terms of factual knowledge

With gamification improving the way in which online learners both acquire and retain information, it’s worth considering incorporating some game play into your next eLearning course.

How to apply gamification to improve your corporate training

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