What do your current training materials say about your company? Do they reflect your unique culture? Are they engaging and exciting? Training is often the first real chance new employees have to learn about how you do business, and it’s a great opportunity to remind current employees why they love their jobs so much. Adding fun elements to your interactive training, such as games and quizzes, lets you to share your company values and culture in through direct experience. And it’s much more fun than just reading swathes of text from the screen.

Embedding interactivity into your training

We’ve come up with some ideas for different games and quizzes you can embed in your Way We Do Activated Checklists.

• Quizzes are a great way for you and your team to measure their knowledge of key concepts in your business. Create quizzes with multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank answer options.
• Matching games are a fun way to test everyone’s knowledge of key terms and concepts. Create games where users match terms to definitions, or pictures to descriptions.
• Drag and drop games are a great way to test how well your team understands how different concepts are related. Users play by dragging and dropping items to the correct location, or by matching items to their corresponding descriptions.
• Short answer questions are those where people provide their own answers to questions and are a good way of assessing critical thinking skills.
• Case studies provide excellent opportunities for your team members to apply their knowledge to real-world situations. Case studies present users with a scenario, then ask them to provide a solution.
• Simulations give users hands-on experience with key concepts. Users explore how their actions affect outcomes by interacting within virtual environment.

Of course, this approach doesn’t just work in Activated Checklists. You can also embed your training modules in any policy or procedure in Way We Do.

Where to get training games and quizzes

You don’t need to worry if you’re not a training or software guru. There are plenty of ready-made resources you can make use of in your business for free. Here are some of our favorites.

• Genially is a great design platform with plenty of fun templates you can use to create presentations, games and other content.
• Blooket is a handy tool for turning simple quizzes into fun, interactive games. Host your own office trivia event on any topic, using this dynamic platform.
• Kahoot gives a fun cartoon feel to simple quizzes. It offers a range of question and answer styles and can work on-location or remotely through users’ devices.

Tips and tricks for your interactive training

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating effective games and quizzes.

• Follow the KISS Principle – Review the questions closely to ensure they make sense, and that they only have one correct answer.
• Keep it relevant – Make sure users can find the answers in the training materials you provide. The goal is not to confound them, but to help them retain more information.
• Make it fun – Keeping your games interesting will have your team happy, even eager, to participate.
• Provide a challenge – Your game should be just hard enough to give them a sense of accomplishment for doing well.
• Give feedback – Have the game or quiz provide instant feedback to your learners so they can see how they’re doing.

Gamifying training makes this part of your operation more engaging and memorable, and gets new-starts off on the right foot with quick wins and positive experiences they’ll then carry into their work. Have some fun with your team and explore the platforms we’ve suggested to see how much more personality and engagement you can bring to your training (not to mention better outcomes).