Training and Learning are the yin and yang of employee engagement.  Training is generally regarded as a formal, top-down activity designed to build understanding, proper practices and even compliance. It tends to be a purpose built to teach specific content set by HR or another department or group. Learning, by contrast, is multi-dimensional and driven by the individual. People can certainly learn while they’re being trained, but they can also learn in informal, less structured ways. Regardless of how you slice it, both training and learning represent an enormous challenge for today’s business managers. Why? 

The term employee engagement is used to describe the participation and commitment level of workers. When employees are truly engaged, they perform to the best of their abilities, do what's optimal for the company and resist competitive employment offers. Simply put, engaged employees are loyal – and as a result, they can drive meaningful increases in productivity, profitability and product quality, as well as meaningful decreases in absenteeism, turnover and shrinkage.

Since employee engagement can have such significant business impacts, it's no surprise that managers want to keep their workforce engaged. But that's easier said than done. In fact, a global study by Gallup¹ found that a mere 13% of employees are engaged at work! Of the remaining 87%, more than half (63%) are not engaged, and 24% are actively disengaged.

Call Center Week 2015 is right around the corner, June 15-19, in Las Vegas, so today, I'm putting the finishing touches on my presentation, which is scheduled for Tuesday, June 16, at 11:15 a.m. - 2:15 p.m. in Workshop J. I'll be talking about how companies are using gamification to engage, influence and motivate their call center agents. My goal is to help conference attendees truly appreciate the potential of gamification, better understand exactly what it is and why it's so powerful and then take the first steps in planning their gamification strategy, including communicating internally.

People often ask me what gamification looks like, and then they're a bit surprised when I say that, if done right, gamification doesn't look like anything in particular—because it's so well designed and embedded in your systems that you don't even notice it.