MUR
Business simulation is a powerful tool for organizational development and training. It enables your employees to align business strategies, improve business finance skills, and business acumen, and ultimately drive the bottom line in your favour.
Business simulations offer a hands-on and interactive learning experience. Rather than focusing on theoretical knowledge, business simulations help employees build skills, gain a big picture view of the company all at once, improve conceptual understanding, and influence leadership development activities.
However, for the business simulations to be impactful, their relevance needs to be maintained. An improper setting can prevent you from creating and executing strategy in a simulated marketplace. This, in turn, can lead to the participants failing to develop the right skill set.
Where as the right simulation can enable a good understanding of customer segments, value propositions, resource management, organisational capabilities, and even human capital management.
With that said, the following are the 8 signs that prove your business simulation needs a revamp.
1. Employees are failing to see things from different perspectives
One of the biggest benefits of a robust business simulation is that it puts participants out of their comfort zones. However, a failed or an outdated system may Just backfire.
If your team members are not feeling challenged enough, it is a sign that your business simulation needs a revamp. The simulation needs to push them towards developing a fresh different perspective.
2. Multi-player systems lagging
Just like in real life, business simulations should Ideally be linked to each other. That is, the decisions made and the actions performed are independent, while still being linked to one another. Multi-player simulations allow participants to experience team challenges, based on real life situations.
3. Employees are failing to get a holistic understanding of work
Silo mentality among the employees is one of the most commonly faced struggles by organisations across industries. However, if you feel like your teams have a narrow understanding of cross-functional dynamics, your business simulation needs to address the same.
The simulation must provide them with real-life challenges to enable impactful training. Build your business simulation is a great example of a cross-functional simulation.
4. Employees are failing to experience everyday corporate situations
To build a successful business, your workforce needs to be apt. Latest business simulations systems expose employees to everyday situations, which isn’t the case with old systems. If yours isn’t keeping your employees up-to-date with daily situations, then it is of no use.
Your system should make the participants comfortable, allowing them to make decisions and take actions based on everyday situations, just like they would in real life. The best thing about this system is that irrespective of the decisions or actions they take, they don’t have to face any undesirable consequences. This is the beauty of a true business simulation system.
5. Unappealing Interface
The business simulation system should be life-like, with real-life challenges and situations.
Also, many online business simulations provide an in-depth analytical report based on the employee’s performance during the challenge. This includes everything from improvements, suggestions, categories, and more.
6. Lack of teaching methods
Today’s competitive business world requires the workforce to upskill at every step of their professional journey. Thus, the business simulation you need to address the unique learning objectives within an organisation.
This includes everything from lectures and discussions, pen and paper exercises, after-action review, classroom feedback, and debriefs among other things.
7. Inflexible configurations
If your simulations are not very flexible and cannot be configured in many different ways, then they need to be revamped immediately.
Modern simulations come with flexible configurations. For example, a single simulation can run over a 1- 4 days timeframe. Even the team sizes can range from 1 participant per team to as many as needed. The number of teams participating can range from as few as 2 and as many as 10.
8. Increased time and cost
One of the biggest challenges that organisations face with simulations is their cost-effectiveness. And, an outdated simulation can also lower the time effectiveness of the overall experience.
While simulations are designed and developed to lower time and costs, an outdated system can lag you on both ends. So, it is always vital to keep your simulations updated all the time.
Conclusion
As an organisation, you must focus on improving the performance of your workforce with the right program.
Business simulations are an ideal way to give your employees a hands-on experience of the real world. Be on the lookout for these 8 signs to determine whether your business simulations need a revamp.
