Serious game
Onboarding serious game: advantages and conception by Collock
As you probably know if you’re on this page, onboarding is a crucial moment in an employee’s journey. It’s during these first few days that the new employee must adapt to the company culture, its DNA and its values, all while learning the fundamentals of their role. Unfortunately, despite its importance, far too many companies still struggle to make this experience truly engaging. To address this issue, one option is to turn to onboarding serious games, which Collock discusses in more detail in this article.
Serious game – Definition
Serious Game – Goals
Serious Game – HR uses
Collock’s method
Why focus on your onboarding?
Onboarding is not a formality. It’s the first true contact a new hire has with your company’s culture, values and internal processes. A well-organized onboarding phase can make the difference between an employee who feels welcomed, empowered and committed, and one who feels isolated and disengaged. At a time when talent retention is one of the biggest HR challenges, onboarding has become a strategic touchpoint.
But focusing on onboarding doesn’t just mean compiling a list of documents or organizing a welcome coffee. It’s about creating a meaningful and memorable experience that sets the tone for collaboration and long-term engagement. And in this context, HR teams can turn to an innovative solution: the onboarding serious game.
The persuasive dimension
Highlight a message through visuals and audio assets.
The informative dimension
Enable the player to learn by interacting with the message.
The educative dimension
Communicate a message or train a player. The most important one.
Serious games are serious matters
Advergaming
Communicate a message for an educational, informative or persuasive purpose.
Practice serious games
Improve players’ cognitive and motor performances through stimulation.
Training serious games
Teach and develop behavioural or technical knowledge and skills. Also called learning games
The advantages of a successful onboarding experience
A well-executed onboarding process has immediate and long-term benefits. In the short term, it reduces the stress of new hires and speeds up their operational integration. In the long term, it enhances employee satisfaction, increases productivity and reduces turnover.
But that’s not just a factor of productivity! Indeed, onboarding plays a key role in establishing trust. It allows new team members to understand not only what they are expected to do but also how they can fit into the culture of the company. It promotes alignment with corporate values and encourages quicker ownership of the company’s vision.
However, traditional onboarding methods such as presentations and slideshows fail to create this engagement. They inform, but rarely inspire. To break this pattern, more and more companies are turning to onboarding serious games.
Serious games: an innovative approach to transforming onboarding
A serious game is a game designed for a purpose other than pure entertainment. When applied to onboarding, it becomes an educational and integration tool. It immerses new recruits in a playful and interactive experience while conveying essential information about the company.
With serious games, onboarding becomes a dynamic journey. New hires become active participants in their integration. They explore the company’s history, values, key stakeholders, internal tools and policies in an immersive way. This learning method is more enjoyable, but also more effective in terms of information retention and emotional impact.
Moreover, onboarding serious games introduce a notion of experimentation. New employees can make decisions, test strategies and experience consequences without real-life risks.
The advantages of serious games in the discovery process
Incorporating serious games into your onboarding process offers five main advantages:
- Immersive engagement: The game format captures attention and maintains focus over time. New hires are more involved in the experience and develop a stronger emotional connection to the company.
- Better memorization: When players are emotionally and intellectually engaged, they retain information more effectively. Onboarding serious games help transform abstract or dense information into concrete and memorable experiences.
- Development of soft skills: Collaboration, communication and decision-making are implicit dimensions of serious games. In an onboarding context, they help new recruits better integrate socially and develop a proactive mindset from day one.
- Breaking the ice: For new employees, arriving in an unfamiliar work environment can be intimidating. Games create a relaxed and inclusive atmosphere that encourages interaction and the creation of social bonds.
- Adaptability: With Collock, the serious game can be tailored to fit your company’s sector, size, tone and values. It’s a flexible format that can evolve with your processes and grow with your teams.
Your fully personalized serious game onboarding experience with Collock
Collock has made onboarding innovation one of its priorities. We believe that gamification, when designed with pedagogical intention, can radically transform the first days of your employees in the company.
Our custom onboarding serious games are co-constructed with your HR, communication, and operational teams. We start by identifying the objectives of your onboarding program and, then, we design a scenario and game mechanics tailored to your audience.
Our expertise also covers deployment and post-game follow-up. We help you integrate the game into your onboarding path, measure its impact and continuously adapt it based on your feedback and evolving needs.
Whether you’re welcoming dozens of interns or onboarding senior profiles, our serious games bring structure, energy and coherence to your process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of content can be integrated into an onboarding serious game?
All types of content can be integrated: company history, organizational chart, tools, corporate values, safety rules, product knowledge… The important thing is to define the strategic messages and convert them into game mechanics that encourage discovery and reflection.
Is a serious game suitable for all profiles?
Yes. One of the strengths of serious games is their inclusivity. They adapt to all generations, roles and levels of responsibility. The key is to design the experience with the audience in mind, in terms of tone, complexity, and format.
Can the game be deployed remotely?
Absolutely. We offer digital formats accessible online from a computer or smartphone.
Can the game be reused for multiple onboarding sessions?
Yes. Our serious games are designed to be reused and updated easily. This makes them a long-term investment that evolves with your company.
Want to design a custom onboarding serious game? Tell us more about your needs now!