Unlock the Secrets of Effective Communication
In an ever-evolving business landscape, effective communication is the cornerstone of successful teamwork. But how can teams truly hone their communication skills in an engaging, practical, and fun way?
The answer lies in the innovative approach of game-based learning. Enter Gaminar.net and their game-changing team building collaborative communication game designed specifically to enhance effective communication within teams.
Gaminar.net, known for its prowess in providing immersive, digital game-based learning experiences, introduces a team building collaborative communication game that not only strengthens communication but fosters better engagement and cohesion within teams. This unique approach of creating a fun yet challenging environment sets Gaminar.net apart from traditional training methods, truly encapsulating the essence of interactive training and gamification at work.
Using Unlock to promote your team’s effective communication: How does it work?
In Unlock, the Gaminar.net team building collaborative communication game, your team receives a series of photos, each of which is a zoomed-in version of the same photo. The challenge is to describe these photos verbally and collaboratively arrange them in the correct sequence, as a team. Starting with the most zoomed-in photo in the first slot, you work your way to the most zoomed-out photo in the last slot. This unique approach adds an exciting twist to the game, requiring teams to communicate effectively to solve the puzzle and unlock the hidden sequence. As the team engages in discussions, debates, and exchanges of ideas, they not only strengthen their communication skills but also build trust and enhance collaboration.
Benefits of Game-Based Learning
Why gamify learning? The beauty of a gamified learning platform like Gaminar.net lies in its ability to create an interactive training environment that participants enjoy. By injecting the elements of fun and challenge into the learning process, the platform transforms traditional workshops and training sessions into immersive, memorable experiences.
Gaminar.net’s team building collaborative communication game is a prime example of gamification in corporate training. Through this game, teams can identify communication gaps, develop mutual understanding, and learn to communicate more effectively—all within an engaging game-based context.
Transforming Training with Gaminar.net
The era of one-sided, passive learning methods is fading. Now, interactive games for training sessions, gamification techniques for corporate training, and immersive education are at the forefront of effective team development. Gaminar.net is leading the charge with innovative solutions that create engaging learning activities for adults.
In addition to fostering effective communication, Gaminar.net’s collaborative communication game creates an opportunity for teams to learn more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses, facilitating better teamwork and collaboration. This immersion and engagement go a long way in improving the overall dynamics and productivity of a team, making Gaminar.net an ideal partner for all your corporate training needs.
Ready to revolutionize your team’s communication and collaboration? Book a Free Train The Trainer Session for Unlock today and experience the transformative power of game-based learning firsthand.
Spicing up your webinars
The link between training and ROIs is not direct. But beyond bringing value to work processes, training enables employees to stay relevant and perform at desired levels. Changes in the macro-environment have however forced organizations to rethink their training strategies, and instructor-led classroom training is fast being replaced by webinars, e-learning programs, etc.
Webinars may feature a facilitator, so a trainee has multiple ways to grasp an idea or a concept. As a discovery-based learning experience, this engages people and is one of the finest ways of learning transfer.
Webinars are vastly growing in the popularity received for the past decade or so. The underlying reason is that a webinar may be the best way to facilitate communication among corporate employees. Face to face presence in a board room is not required.
A trainer or a manager can interact with the trainees or employees partly over a webinar, even while they may not be present at a common physical location. Similarly, employees located at a separate branch office can also comfortably attend a webinar without having to fly to the main office.
There are characteristically several ways in which webinars overcome the limitations presented by corporate classroom training sessions:
- Increases collaboration
Reaching out to even more people is simplified by the means of webinars. One can train not only the people who are present at the office but also the people who are located a distance away.
In case, some key personnel who need to attend a meeting are not present, conducting a meeting becomes pointless, in some cases. When a webinar is created for the benefit of all attendees, they can all attend the same irrespective of where they are located.
- Remote workplace
Organizing training sessions and meetings for employees located at a remote workplace is always a difficulty because visiting the head office repeatedly for meetings is difficult.
Webinars make a nice solution in such cases. Employees at a remote location are likely to pay additional heed to the webinars. This helps them be sure of what is expected of them.
Driving engagement with webinars nevertheless becomes difficult at times
Driving engagement and participation with your attendees sitting behind their computer screens nevertheless becomes difficult in several cases, while presenting a webinar. Learner engagement is a quintessential metric for the success of a webinar, and if a webinar fails to drive engagement, it does not meet its purpose well.
A few of the conventional methods for making webinars more interactive are Q & A’s, polls, live chats, and surveys, blending your webinar with experiential learning activities. Such activities deliver an exponential boost to engagement levels, and the participants restrict their tendency to multitask. As a discovery-based learning experience, webinars add value to trainees and the organization as a whole.
Use of gamified learning in webinars
Facilitators nowadays use implements of gamified learning in the webinars. This helps in several ways. Just as an instance, by reviewing scores in real-time, further training can be accordingly paced. Similarly, gamification encourages independent learning and induces learning retention.
This goes to show that even in the era of digitalized and self-paced learning – the value of facilitator-led experience is unparalleled.
Digital Team Building Activities in a World that Works Remotely
Remote working trends show that many employees have been anticipating a remote working (r)evolution for years – coveting Slack hours, Zoom meetings, and working from bed in their oldest tracksuit, and those who have forsaw the need for digital team building activities, were just waiting for the future that has just arrived
Employers, not so much…
2020 however, has seen the remote working trend erupting into a full-blown Work-from-Home (WFH) movement, with Amazon, Google, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, Salesforce and thousands of other companies around the world compelled to create innovate WFH models. And while the availability and ease of use of technologies to collaborate and stay in constant contact have long been in place, the question remains:
How will remote-working companies maintain their identity, common purpose and culture?
The answer lies in digital learning and development and digital team building activities through gamification, but let’s first have a quick run-through of why it’s important.
Teamwork Is Critical to Business Success
The guy who wrote Star Wars, Matthew Woodring Stover, said
“If you take out the team in teamwork, it’s just work. Now who wants that?”
Each individual has different talents, weaknesses, communication skills, strengths, and habits. When teamwork is working, the whole team would be motivated and working toward the same goal in harmony – with the following benefits for both the employer and employee:
- For the organisation, teamwork maximises shared knowledge, and stimulates productivity and performance, creativity, enterprise innovation, problem solving and company culture.
- For the individual, teamwork is critical to expand skillsets by learning from each other, and building and maintaining human connection, communication, support, morale and fellowship.
It’s clear that one of the most powerful reasons for teamwork is to get results. And team building is one of the best ways to for employers to establish and develop trust, performance, communication, conflict management and mentorship.
In the “old normal” work-from-office days, the solution would be simple: Let’s plan a team building event that is fun and motivational, and will magically build skills like communication, planning, problem-solving and conflict resolution.
Maybe, if there is budget surplus, there might actually be two teambuilding events a year. Right?
But what does “team building” mean in a remote WFH environment, and how would it work?
Challenges of Remote and digital Team Building Activities
Firstly, it’s important to know that remote working does not automatically mean a loss in employee productivity – one of the concerns shared by many employers new to the WFH operational model.
In fact, a two-year study, led by Professor Nicholas Bloom from Stanford University, highlighted that remote workers are in fact 13% more productive than in-office workers and take fewer sick days. Further research revealed almost a quarter (23%) of remote workers are more willing to put in extra hours to complete tasks.
Researchers agree when it’s done right, telework can improve employee productivity, creativity and morale.
Most workplace leaders will admit that it’s hard to get a group of individuals to work together smoothly.
Yet building and maintaining a successful team that cohesively work together is no simple task, even when everyone shares an open-plan office environment. But when you have to do it remotely, the challenges of building a collaborative and enthusiastic team becomes threefold:
- Google Hangouts is just not the same. In a remote working model, employees, particularly younger ones, will miss the lack of social interactions. Part of the camaraderie at work is seeing your co-workers, going out to lunch together or having a drink coffee after work.
- No more Trampoline Park. Or kite surfing, or playing Twister in the boardroom. This means all learning and development needs to be digital, with the power of motivating employees intrinsically…and remotely.
- Modern learners are short on attention span. Which means you have to keep them engaged and stimulated where they feel most comfortable – online. (Keeping in mind that the same employees who are desperate to work in their PJs, might be the ones rolling their eyes at the thought of traditional teambuilding…)
Fortunately, in the new remote WFH era, learning and development, as well as remote teambuilding activities have become much more captivating.
Doing it right: remote and digital Team Building Activities Through Experiential Learning
Over the last decade, experiential learning has become increasingly popular and more widely used to engage employees in interactive learning and development activities. As part of the remote experiential learning process, gamification engages employees in different ways. It uses game principles and techniques to create recognition (stimulating progress), feedback, fun and collaboration.
Human Development Solutions have gone beyond the hype, developing digital gamification solutions like SHIFT, NAVIGATOR and more to engage remote employees in different ways, by:
- Making the work of employees more enjoyable, creative and efficient by associating learning with the fun of playing games and being in competition;
- Engaging employees in experiential learning – building knowledge by collaborating to solve real-world problems;
- Using simulations, role plays, project-based learning, and other immersive educational experiences in real workplace situations;
- Using gamification as a feedback loop when employees practice skills in a real scenario, for example, if a team member is unable to receive a badge, fails to increase his or her score, or cannot advance to the next level, it serves as indicator that there is area for improvement on that particular learning module.