Fun and Games

In his GP Strategies article, “Overcoming the 5 Most Common Training Challenges with Game-Based Learning Solutions,” Rich Calcutt writes, “A well-designed game can engage emotion, drive behavioral change, and enhance learning outcomes, all while providing a fun and personalized experience for employees.”

It is this personalization, engagement, and enhanced learning outcomes that Paige Parker Salazar writes about in “Cement Learning With Fun.”

Personalizing Fun

To know what types of activities to use in a training session, it’s important to know your own facilitation style and personality, and to understand your learners, advises Salazar.

Does humor come naturally to you? Will your learners appreciate light-heartedness and activities, or think they’re a waste of time?

One way to know is through assessments. Salazar uses the DiSC model, but other assessments will work as well. As an “I,” enthusiasm and high-spiritedness come naturally to Salazar, she explains. But what if you have learners whose style is conscientious, and are more reserved, private, and systematic? These individuals tend to prefer independent work; you might incorporate analytical questions or detailed case studies into your training session, according to Salazar.

If your organization uses assessments more broadly, you can seek to access learner results ahead of the training. If not, you can get learners up and moving early in the course (ask about mobility issues in advance with a questionnaire) by having them self-assess and go to corners of the room based on their tendencies: fast-paced and outspoken, cautious and reflective, questioning and skeptical, or accepting and warm.

Engagement

Facilitators can begin training sessions with ice breakers to help establish psychological safety and introduce the training topic—think exercises that will require participants to provide a fun fact about themselves or weigh in on their knowledge or thoughts about the subject (such as “What do you think is the worst thing about organizational change?” in a change management course).

Teamwork, role play, trivia games, and short videos can be incorporated throughout the training course to break up presentations, give learners a short break from heavy or emotionally taxing content, or to get participants out of their chairs to recirculate blood to the brain and improve thinking.

Enhanced Learning

Research shows that fun in workplace training leads participants to be more engaged, acquire greater knowledge and skills, retain material, and collaborate better with classmates.

Facilitators can use activities to assess knowledge, such as through polls, quizzes, or games like Jeopardy!

To increase the chances of real behavior change in the long term, trainers can end their session with after-training action planning. Classmates can have fun holding their teammates accountable to training objectives and learning about how others will put their newfound knowledge into practice.