Gamification in Training: 10 company examples and what you can learn

Gamification in training is usually illustrated with the same few examples, and they usually come with figures nobody can trace. The same case appears in different articles with different percentages and no source. Here we do the opposite: we gather ten companies that have documented how they use games to train their teams, explain what they did and take one lesson from each that you can apply in your own organisation.

Some of these examples are a few years old, but they remain the clearest references for how game-based training is designed. It helps to read them with one distinction in mind. In some, game mechanics are applied to training content (points, badges, levels). In others, serious games and simulations let participants practise decisions in an environment that reproduces real work. Both approaches work, but they solve different problems.

The 10 companies at a glance

• Salesforce (Trailhead): badges, points and ranks that make progress visible.
• Deloitte (Leadership Academy): gamification to solve a participation problem.
• Cisco: certification levels to organise a large course catalogue.
• Siemens (Plantville): an industrial plant as a simulator, scored with real business indicators.
• IBM (INNOV8): a 3D simulator to understand business processes.
• L'Oréal: a virtual company connected to a conversation with the manager.
• Walmart: virtual reality to rehearse situations that are hard to recreate.
• BBVA (Héroes): a game to step into the shoes of the entrepreneurs the foundation serves.
• Microsoft (Ribbon Hero): challenges to learn Office, improved with usage data.
• Domino's (Pizza Hero): a game to learn the company's standards before the first day.

Gamification examples: game mechanics applied to training

Gamification examples: game mechanics applied to training

1. Salesforce: Trailhead, badges and ranks

Salesforce launched Trailhead in 2014 as a gamified learning platform. Learners work through short, self-paced modules, each with its own badge, and the points and badges they collect move them up a ladder of ranks. It starts at Scout, passes through Hiker, Explorer, Adventurer, Mountaineer and Expeditioner, and reaches Ranger, which according to Salesforce requires 100 badges and 50,000 points. Ranger was the top rank for years, but there are now star ranks above it. Salesforce also offers myTrailhead, a version that lets companies build their own branded gamified content for employees, customers or partners.

What you can learn: break content into small units and make progress visible. Each badge is concrete proof of what someone has learned, and public profiles turn that progress into something people can show.

2. Deloitte: Leadership Academy and the participation problem

The Deloitte Leadership Academy began in 2008 as an online training portal for executives, with content organised into areas of study. According to its leaders, as reported by outlets such as CIO, participation was lower than expected, so in 2012 they added gamification with the Badgeville platform: points for completing courses, badges and a leaderboard. Nine months later, according to CIO, around 47% more employees were returning to the portal every day. It is a good example of the warning at the end of this article: other sources quote different figures for the same case.

What you can learn: gamification fixes a participation problem, not a content problem. Deloitte already had quality training designed for people with little time, with lessons that could be followed in anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. The game mechanics came later, to bring people back to it.

3. Cisco: certification levels to organise the catalogue

Cisco had a global social media training programme with dozens of courses, and the challenge was knowing where to start. According to a case published by Cornerstone OnDemand, the company organised it into three certification levels (Specialist, Strategist and Master), added sub-certifications by area, such as HR, external communications, sales and partners, and introduced team challenges.

What you can learn: levels help order a large catalogue. A path with clear stages tells each person what to do next, and team challenges add a collaborative element.

Serious games and simulations in training

4. Siemens: Plantville, an industrial plant as a simulator

In March 2011, Siemens launched Plantville, an online game where players run an industrial plant. They can choose between three plants (a bottling plant, a vitamin plant and a train plant), identify their problems and apply solutions. Performance is measured through indicators such as safety, on-time delivery, quality, energy management and employee satisfaction. Siemens designed it for several audiences: customers, prospects, students and its own workforce, to whom it wanted to show the breadth of its portfolio.

What you can learn: use real business indicators as the score. If the game rewards what the company values, the practice resembles the work.

5. IBM: INNOV8, business processes in 3D

IBM introduced INNOV8 in November 2007 as a 3D simulator that teaches business process management and brings business and technology people closer together. Players tackle challenges such as redesigning a call centre, processing an insurance claim or opening an investment account, and move through three levels: modelling the process, innovating it and implementing the changes. The company offered it for free and it was widely used in universities.

What you can learn: a game can work on skills that are hard to teach with cases or slides, such as understanding how the processes of a company fit together.

6. L'Oréal: a virtual company for product managers

At L'Oréal Canada, product managers who have been in their role for three months are given a virtual company to run. They work in pairs for four hours a week over six weeks. Each week they study a topic, such as market segmentation or brand positioning, and the following day they make decisions in the simulator. Afterwards they see the resulting market share and compare their results with other teams. At the end, they meet their manager to discuss how to apply what they learned to their work. The company has also used Reveal, a business game aimed at identifying young talent.

What you can learn: the sandwich of content, practice and a conversation with the manager. A simulator on its own teaches less than one connected to real work.

7. Walmart: virtual reality to rehearse the difficult

In 2017, Walmart announced it would bring virtual reality to its Walmart Academies, the centres where it trains new and existing employees, with content from the company Strivr, after testing it in around thirty of them. The simulations range from everyday maintenance of the shop floor to situations such as Black Friday crowds. According to Walmart, people who used virtual reality retained information better, which is why the company decided to extend it to all its academies. This case is closer to simulation than to gamification, but it illustrates the logic of training for what is costly or dangerous to recreate.

What you can learn: rehearse what you cannot rehearse in real life. A demand peak cannot be created on purpose in a store, but it can be simulated.

8. BBVA: Héroes, stepping into an entrepreneur's shoes

The BBVA Microfinance Foundation created Héroes, a digital game in which employees experience the daily life of the entrepreneurs the foundation works with: the player must help a rural entrepreneur reach a series of goals by interacting with her. The project received an award from the Observatorio de Comunicación Interna. BBVA also explains that gamification is the basis of its B-token learning model.

What you can learn: games can also build perspective. Putting yourself in the place of someone whose work you do not see every day creates an understanding that a report does not.

9. Microsoft: Ribbon Hero, learning Office by playing

Microsoft developed Ribbon Hero from 2009 to teach Office features in an entertaining way, and designed it so companies could also use it to train employees. In a presentation, one of its managers explained that players could earn points by reading help, watching a video or playing a challenge, and that almost all of them chose the challenge. After noticing early drop-off, the team added levels with a stronger sense of achievement and a narrative with Clippy, the Office mascot.

What you can learn: people prefer doing to reading, and it pays to iterate with usage data. Microsoft changed the game when it saw where people left.

10. Domino's: Pizza Hero, practising before the first day

Domino's launched Pizza Hero in 2011, an iPad game in which players learn to make pizzas following the company's standards: they go through a "prep school", receive comments from a virtual chef and are scored for speed and quality. About a year later a hiring element was added: players who passed the first challenges were invited to apply for a job. It is a mixed case between marketing, recruitment and training, but it shows how a game can work as a realistic preview of a role.

What you can learn: a game can teach work standards before the person starts. Someone who arrives at the job having practised arrives with an advantage.

What these cases have in common

Beyond their differences, five patterns repeat:

1. Mechanics serve a specific goal. Participation at Deloitte, orientation at Cisco, understanding of processes at IBM. None is decoration.
2. Progress is visible. Badges, levels or indicators give people proof that they are advancing.
3. Practice happens in a safe environment. Siemens, IBM, L'Oréal and Walmart let people make mistakes without real consequences.
4. The game connects with the work. L'Oréal does it with the final conversation with the manager, and Siemens with real indicators.
5. They measure and improve. Microsoft adjusted Ribbon Hero when it saw the drop-off.

One warning: many of the spectacular figures that circulate about these cases come from secondary sources that contradict each other. Before quoting a percentage in an internal report, check where it comes from. And be careful with leaderboards: if only the top ten in a workforce of thousands are highlighted, everyone else may switch off.

More recent examples with published business results

The cases above come from large multinationals, and several are a few years old. These three are training programmes built with Game Strategies serious games, each with a published case study where you can see the detail:

• Vestas: negotiation training. Published result: 21% more sales in one year.
• Phone House: in-store customer service. Published result: 13% higher customer NPS.
• Maersk: negotiation and conflict resolution in its legal team. Published result: 10% fewer accumulated claims.

You can find more in our case studies.

How to start in your company

If you want to launch something similar, a reasonable sequence is to define the behaviour you want to change, choose between game mechanics and a simulation, run a pilot with a small group and measure what participants do afterwards, not only whether they liked it.

If you want to see how simulation-based training works, with decisions and consequences, book a personalised demo with Game Strategies and tell us what your team needs to practise.

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