Study: Video Games Lead To Workplace Success

By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed

October 21, 2010 11:38 AM EDT

The scope of video games has changed from pure entertainment to children's learning tools and a medical textbooks. Now they can be used to train employees on the job.

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A University of Colorado Denver Business School study says organizations which use video games to train employees end up with smarter, more motivated workers who learn more and forget less. Those who have been trained on video games retain information longer than those who do not according to the study.

"What we saw was employees who had played a video game during a training course, after the course had ended, had remembered and retained the information longer ," said Dr. Traci Sitzmann, assistant professor of management. Sitzmann was behind the study, which will be published in the winter edition of Personnel Psychology.

In over a year's worth of work, Sitzmann did a meta analysis of 65 studies and took data from 6,476 trainees who had either used or had not played video games as a training tool. What she saw was those who played video games had an 11 percent higher factual knowledge level, a 14 percent higher skill-based knowledge level and a 9 percent higher retention rate than trainees in comparison groups.

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Sitzmann found not all video games were good training systems. In most cases, video games with active participation were more effective than passive ones.

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"A video game where you're learning about the Civil War, and you're fighting and playing as if you were in the Civil War, then you stop and read a couple of pages about the Civil War. That's a passive game, where you're learning by something other than via gameplay," Sitzmann said.

Cold Stone Creamery is one company that's benefited from video game training. The ice-cream chain was losing money because its workers were over-serving customers. As a result, it created an interactive video game to teach them how much should go into each scoop. Sitzmann said there are other ways video games can help employers save money.

"If you're training an employee face to face during the day, that's paid training. However, if it's something enjoyable, like a video game, they will do it during their free time. In that sense, you can potentially save money, by having them train at home," Sitzmann said.

The use of video games to train employees is not limited to the private sector. The U.S. Department of Defense uses video games to train soldiers, sailors and Marines in simulated disasters.

Even with the success of video games as a workplace training tool, Sitzmann did say they were best used as a complimentary instrument. She said they were only successful, when before and after the games, employers ensured its workers understood the job's complexities.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader