Many companies find the training of employees to be expensive and time-consuming. With very few exceptions workers in companies do not enjoy training. When you perform tasks in certain ways for weeks, months or years training to do them differently is often met with resistance.
When an employer wants to develop their employees and even groom them for management positions training is required. No matter what type of training a company wants to give its workforce it is always necessary to train staff members in team skills and train managers in supervisory skills.
Unfortunately training is often met with resistance and lack of enthusiasm by staff members and managers alike.
Many people are happy in their current positions and do not have any ambitions of moving higher (or at least don't want to put the effort in to secure a higher position). Due to the lack of desire to be trained most training courses in the workplace are ineffective or the skills taught are forgotten very quickly.
As a solution to these problems many business executives would be well advised to look at World of Warcraft (WoW). The Warcraft series may have started as a simple single player computer game but it has evolved into the largest and most successful multi-player online game of all time attracting millions of players worldwide.
Many top executives in the business world have openly praised WoW has the ability and innovative way of training mangers (albeit as a side-effect and not deliberately). Executives from Yahoo to individual entrepreneurs may advocate the playing of WoW but few managers in the business world have ever tried it. This simple fact highlights a rather surprising statistic - players of this game are not kids and teenagers but fall into a range of different age demographics.
Far from being the domain of kids World of Warcraft attracts young adults between the age of 23 and 39 who actively play for approximately twenty-three hours a week.
Although these facts may be interesting and enlightening your are probably wondering what on earth it all has to do with staff training in the business world.
More than you realise!
World of Warcraft rewards players with experience points which they need to progress throughout the game. Players accumulate these by performing a variety of quests that become more challenging as the game progresses. Players must reach level 80 from a starting point of 1 by training their character, completing tasks and by grinding.
The degree of complexity and challenge increases dramatically as you advance across levels. The completion of higher level tasks are rewarded with more experience points and better equipment within the game.
However this is not the only progression that occurs in the game. Social interaction is an intricate part of the game with entry into, or acceptance by, groups and guilds, that are filled with real people, being needed in order to fully appreciate the warcraft gaming experience.
In order to full enjoy the entire gaming experience team work is necessary and leadership skills are essential.
Forget those lame paint-ball type corporate team building events. Get everyone online and in world of warcraft. Consider instead getting your staff interested in world of warcraft and playing as a team. For only ten dollars a month each team member can be trained in team building, organisational and managerial skills.
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