The success of an organization's training strategy is greatly hinged on "learner engagement" and "usage" of the learning platform used for L&D management. However, research has found that 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged. And companies with an engaged workforce outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share. That, right there, could be the difference between a performing and a non-performing business. To help businesses close the gap between their "training goals" and "learner behavior", UpsideLMS has added gamification to its learner-engagement-ready learning management system (LMS) as a part of its 8.5 version release.

While the advantages of gamification (as a part of some tool / software) in the workplace are aplenty and quite evident, too, it's always good to have some things backed by research, which is why this statement from future researcher and gamification expert Nora S. Stampfl is particularly relevant.

She says, "The success of the usage of business software stands and falls with the employees’ participation. Since almost nothing attracts as much attention, and knows how to motivate people and elicits engagement and endurance as games do, a gamification approach of such software seems to be natural. With this new approach, elements we know from video games, e.g. points, badges, or leaderboards, are being integrated into the software. With the help of such game mechanisms, gamification can create a motivation-accelerating system made of incentives, feedback, and rewards that moves the behaviour in a desired direction."

UpsideLMS' point-based gamification module engages and motivates learners to learn by instilling a feeling of healthy competition and achievement, while enabling them to achieve their personal and professional developmental goals. This is done by attaching some points to each learner activity, like logging onto the LMS, completing a curriculum, achieving certain compliance skills/ CPD (continuing professional development points), getting a certificate, etc. The number of points attributed to each activity is determined by the system administrator.

The time factor is critical, too, as most rules have a field for entering time in terms of days, weeks, and months depending upon the context of the rule. On the learner side, UpsideLMS has a leaderboard for the learners to check their status against that of their teams, their friends, across the board, and against a hand-picked selection of people whom the learners can choose by filtering as per learning group, competency skills, designation, and learner names, while the bell notification gives a bird's eye view of the top ten latest-achieved notifications related to gamification.

Along with gamification, UpsideLMS v8.5 also features new reports (consolidated assessment report, batch details report, and assessment analysis report), configurable disclaimer setting (for GDPR and other similar regulations), an online PDF viewer for viewing reference documents, new APIs, and integrations, third-party security audit reports, and more!

Speaking on UpsideLMS’s latest release, Amit Gautam, Director - UpsideLMS, said, "For a system that is responsible for keeping the employees compliant and skilled, and the one that touches their lives every single day, ensuring fun along the way is critical for the system's and the business's success. This is why gamification and LMS is one of the best combinations to boost learner engagement and motivation in training interventions. Our gamification module is easy to use for the admins, while the gamified learning experience is engaging for the learners, a win-win for both!"