Training employees in the digital economy with the use of video games

Abstract

The growth in competition across the digital world means that today’s employees need to be better trained than ever. The skills and knowledge provided by traditional training are already insufficient in the digital environment. The flexibility and interactivity of new digital technologies assist people in meeting the needs of the growing digital economy. Using digital technologies in training promote creativity and high order thinking that are highly valued by employers. The purpose of this paper is to show the correlation between the application of video games in training workforce in the digital economy and the increase of their motivational efficiency and competitiveness in the digital business environment. The methodological approach taken in this study is a mixed methodology based on the experiment, mathematical statistics and survey instruments. The experiment was held on E-Commerce refresher courses for employees in Samara State University of Economics. Two groups of staff from Samara Region companies were taught by two different methods: one group was taught by a trainer at a traditional training, while training a second group included the use of video games. The results confirm the benefits of this approach from a motivational perspective and competitive growth of employees in the digital market. This suggests that the application of video games in the process of computer assisted training for at least some of the time available can be recommended to train staff in the digital economy.