1Huddle’s Sam Caucci on how science-backed gamification will remake workforce training
Here’s a reality check for HR executives. According to the game-based training platform 1Huddle, employees forget 70% of what they learn within three days of traditional training. For those managing a workforce, that’s not just a training challenge — it’s a strategic business problem that directly impacts performance and retention.
1Huddle’s founder and CEO Sam Caucci discovered that firsthand while running sports performance for NFL teams and athletes. “It became really clear that it was maybe easier to train a pro athlete to run a 4.3 40-yard dash than it was to train some of our new staff coming on board,” he says.
That revelation led him to create 1Huddle, which uses games and AI-powered features to help organizations like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Shake Shack and the U.S. Air Force to onboard faster, upskill better and motivate employees through science-backed, competitive learning.
This is not your typical gamification platform offering superficial points and badges. 1Huddle’s approach is grounded in cognitive science and driven by a mission rooted in Caucci’s own personal experience.
Growing up, Caucci watched his mother, a legal secretary who dreamt of becoming a lawyer, devote to 58 years to “typing the memo instead of arguing it in court,” simply because in her time, many parents paid only for their boys to attend college, not their girls. That shameful inequity shaped his belief that everybody deserves access to skills development — particularly what he calls the 80% of American workers without college degrees who benefit from only 20% of corporate training dollars.
The secret behind effective gamification lies in what Caucci terms the “ABCs” of learning: autonomy, belonging and capability. Users need meaningful choices along their educational paths, not forced march-throughs from chapter to chapter. They also benefit from community by way of leaderboards and collaborative challenges, and from consistently discovering what they’re good at, as Caucci sees it. As Nick Saban, former head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, once told him: “The No. 1 driver of motivation is showing them what they’re good at.”
What also sets 1Huddle apart from traditional training programs is the intentional incorporation of something most of us try to avoid. “There’s one major ingredient missing from talent development today: failure,” Caucci says. “Thousands of cognitive science studies support the fact that learning through failure and struggle is critical to retention.” That ethos, borrowed from elite environments like the Navy SEALs, creates what researchers call “desirable difficulties” that make learning stick.
A common misconception is that gamified training appeals mainly to younger workers. Caucci’s data paints an alternative reality, as half of 1Huddle users are either Xers or boomers. That cross-generational appeal is the result of its accessibility, as Caucci sees it: trivia-based games that can be completed in 2-3-minute bursts versus long training sessions that disrupt the workday.
Perhaps most valuable for HR executives is the workforce intelligence 1Huddle unearths. Every game functions as a skills assessment, providing real-time feedback on performance gaps. Meanwhile, the platform also tracks motivation patterns to predict when employees are becoming disengaged.
For HR executives considering gamified training, Caucci has this advice: start with ensuring your organization can actually reward and recognize growth, then partner with platforms that provide real business impact data, not just simple participation metrics. “We don’t give A’s just for showing up to class,” Caucci emphasizes.
As AI continues to reshape everyone’s work experience, Caucci believes the key to effective workforce training lies ultimately in expanding employees’ control over their own development. “For too long, talent development has been something the employer controls,” he says. “We need to afford all workers more control over their own career path.”