通过电子游戏进行企业培训

    亚当•索德维克希望让企业合规培训变得有趣些，或者至少比现在更吸引人一些。这也许听起来很难，但这位True Office的首席执行官相信他已找到办法，能更好地调动员工兴趣，让人力资源部的工作更容易开展。

    索德维克步入企业培训行业是在十年前，当时卖的是视频课程，如今培训行业仍在普遍应用这些老套的技术。但随着平板电脑能提供更加互动的测试手段，索德维克的新公司已开发出了一款形式为快速游戏（通常20分钟不知不觉就过去了）的合规应用软件。员工沉浸在一个精美的互动故事里，然后进行10分钟的测试，以确认他/她理解了相关材料。

    True Office借助的是流行的“游戏化”趋势，将视频游戏的叙事和互动与求职、培训等事务结合起来。很多游戏用奖励和点数来鼓励表现。True Office给员工的唯一奖励是不那么痛苦的合规培训体验。

    最大的好处还是这款软件为企业提供的先进分析。使用这款游戏的企业能知道员工何时阅读了植入游戏之中的公司政策，阅读了多久等等，这些数据能帮助公司免于一些诉讼。

    True Office正在完善测试，计划本月推出。但早期用户称，他们早已看到了应用趋势（比如，如果员工反复忽视某种违反政策的行为），说明这些领域需要进一步培训。哈佛大学(Harvard)对这款软件的测试结果是用户意识到一些重大的违规行为，其实是需要对一些细小问题进行更进一步的培训。“人们的反馈是他们认为这很有趣。”哈佛大学人力资源咨询总监盖瑞•考米尔表示，“但分析对我们很重要。”

    索德维克对于他的产品非常现实：员工不会永远喜欢培训，但他相信他们对True Office的抱怨会少一些。人力资源管理者也会倍感轻松。“我们将取代PowerPoint和三孔档案夹，”他说。True Office提供的数据和工具一定会让一些接受合规培训的人轻松一刻。

    译者：老榆木

    Adam Sodwick wants to make corporate compliance training, er, sexy -- or at least make it more exciting than it is today. That may sound like an uphill battle, but the True Office CEO thinks he has a way to engage employees and make HR folks breathe easier.

    Sodowick got his start in the corporate training business a decade ago peddling video lessons, so he knows that these tired techniques still are commonplace. But now that tablets offer a more interactive medium for testing, Sodowick's new company has developed a compliance app that runs as a fast-paced game (usually a painless 20 minutes). The employee is immersed in a sleek interactive story and then takes a 10-minute quiz to confirm his understanding of the material.

    True Office is riding the popular "gamification" trend, which brings videogame storytelling and interactivity to mundane tasks such as job applications and, yes, training. Many of the games encourage performance with rewards and points. True Office's only prize for employees is a less miserable compliance experience.

    But the real payoff comes in the advanced analytics its program provides employers. Companies using True Office's game will know exactly when and for how long their staff read the policies built into it, helping protect them against liability suits.

    The company is finishing trials and plans to launch this month, but early users say they can already see trends (if employees consistently fail to flag a policy violation, for example) that suggest areas requiring additional training. Harvard's test of the program, for example, revealed that users recognize flagrant infractions but need more training on subtle ones. "The feedback from people was that they thought it was fun," says Gary Cormier, a director of HR consulting for Harvard, "but the analytics are most important to me."

    Sodowick is realistic about his product: Employees will never love training, but he thinks they'll grumble less about True Office. HR executives are another matter. "We're going against PowerPoint and three-ring binders here," he notes. The data and tools True Office provides are sure to set a few hearts in compliance racing.