This year, award-winning game The Sims turns 25, marking several decades of user growth, immersive life and trying to understand Simlish. There is much to learn from the game and it isn’t as obvious as bringing in gamification elements to your learning and development. In fact, the main lessons of The Sims lie in its interactive nature, in the peer communities developed through the game, and in user retention – through nudges, milestones and autonomy.
How The Sims works, and affects, work
For those unaware, The Sims is a virtual game where players can create and control characters known as Sims. The first Sims game (we’re now on the fourth iteration) debuted in 2000 as a sandbox PC game. Simulated environments are an interesting proposition, for both game developers and HR and learning leaders. Humans are intrinsically hardwired to engage with and retain knowledge through immersive experiences. Consider how a toddler learns to walk or a surgeon learns to operate. There’s always a hands-on, trial and error component.
But this extends beyond learning effectiveness. It can be life or death for your business. Operations, compliance, data security, cybersecurity, productivity and performance can all be supported with the right hands-on, experiential learning environment. Today, there are many virtual tools you can use to imitate the tasks and skills that people will need to use in their everyday work. These include simulations and virtual labs.
Virtual labs versus simulations
At this point, you may be wondering why you would pick a simulation or a lab, and what the fundamental differences are between them. Both tools provide hands-on learning experiences and practice to build job-ready skills, but a simulation replicates a technology using video and screenshots while a lab offers a live environment for practice.
In a simulation, learning paths come with click-through instructions to guide learners through to the correct answers. In a lab, instructions are integrated and delivered in the moment of need. With as little or as much guidance as the learner and instructor/lab developer desires. As for scoring and skill validation (more on this later), in a simulation you’ll get skill data from multiple-choice questionnaires and simulation click-throughs while in a lab you’ll get data generated from the actions performed within the environment (for example, the steps someone took to build a database).
3 lessons from The Sims
With those definitions out of the way, let’s refocus back on how The Sims continuously engages and challenges users and what lessons these hold for workforce and learning strategies.
- The experience is tailored
From the start, users are able to customize their Sim character. In HR, being able to customize onboarding to each new employee, based on their role, department needs and past experiences, will help them get up to productivity quicker. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding, customizing certain parts, for example, their training, makes for a more engaging and efficient start to their career with your organization.
The employee experience is coming under increased focus due to high numbers of employees disengaging from their employers (in the U.S, engagement has fallen to 31%, the lowest level in a decade). Employees expect more autonomy and freedom, with return-to-office mandates causing a particularly negative stir, along with career development opportunities and skilling that aligns with their goals. Loyalty isn’t assured, especially with younger generations, so to retain employees, HR needs to understand their workforces deeply. Skill data can be a valuable tool here, offering insights into the skills people have, what they’re using and what they’re building. It allows you to offer highly relevant learning and career development, at scale, but in a personal way.
The same personalized ethos applies to the learning experience. It’s not enough to spray-and-pray with generic learning content and hope that someone finds that enough to build skills for their current role and future needs. Instead, learning needs to meet people in their moment of need, based on their skills and skill gaps, with a hands-on immersive component that translates their theoretical learning into real-world performance. That’s where labs and simulations come in, as an interactive way for someone to stretch their skills and build on their understanding. These can be self-paced, allowing someone to learn at a comfortable speed and repeat sections if needed. Again, offering a level of personalization that means nobody is left behind when learning new concepts.
2. Peer sharing is a big draw
The Sims, for all of its simplicity, drew attention and retained users because it is highly social. People talk about it, they share tips and they interact in its immersive environment. In your workplace, people are going to share their ideas, concerns, recommendations and feedback. As HR and learning leaders, your job is to facilitate and guide this so that it’s a strength in your company culture.
Peer sharing is a huge asset to your organization as it broadens perspectives and allows for new knowledge to be disseminated. To encourage this, you can set up ways for people to share organically such as ‘watercooler areas’ (which also work online, for remote or hybrid companies) and more intentionally, such as peer communities or lunch-and-learn sessions. A mixed approach often works well.
3. Milestones are celebrated
Sims characters can achieve certain ‘life milestones’ within the game and your employees will enjoy the dopamine rush that comes with recognition in your company too. interestingly, the greatest ‘reward’ rush in our brains comes from achieving things that are challenging. And what’s challenging to one person may not feel difficult to another. In a learning environment, this may look like recommendations for harder, higher-level training. In a virtual lab, this often happens through tasks and scenarios becoming more challenging to complete.
Personalising your reward and recognition system to different roles, departments and skill levels can take it to the next level, encouraging people to continuously grow and push themselves. This is made much easier when your skill data is up to date, validated and consolidated in your HCM or learning system. Rewards, recommendations, internal mobility opportunities and more can be informed by someone’s learning, skill level and performance within simulated lab scenarios.
Tip of the iceberg
Of course, there are many ways to incorporate game-like mechanics into your workforce and learning strategies. Games are particularly effective at capturing our imagination and attention for long periods, and this is something invaluable when trying to engage and upskill your workforce. They also employ many tactics to retain people long-term, from nudges to a ‘fear of missing out’. So, if your strategies need a refresh, consider finding inspiration in your nearest console.
