4 Ways to Implement Virtual Reality Training Via Your Learning Department
Enhancing Employee Training with VR Training
Virtual Reality Training or VR Training for short-it’s the way of the future of corporate learning and development although you wouldn’t know it if you step into the majority of learning departments today.
While there are leading brands like Walmart and Boeing that are currently utilizing this technology for training purposes, barriers to entry like the cost of the VR headsets or lack of enthusiasm towards using VR have continued to stump the widespread growth of using the modality.
As a Learning Leader, you may not have the budget to move into VR training or see it in the near future for extensive use, however, it does make sense to start becoming familiar with its benefits and possibly make the case for using it in some capacity sooner than later. With Millennials and Generation Z making up most new hires for organizations and the consistent updates in technology, VR may create just the right engagement level for specific areas of learning and development. Here are four areas to consider when thinking about virtual reality training in your organization that we've seen popularize with clients at TrainingFolks.
Employee Onboarding
Offering a good employee onboarding experience has a huge impact throughout the course of an employee’s time with you. Up to 70% of employee turnover is voluntary meaning employees are the ones choosing to leave companies. Reasons can vary which include lack of appreciation, poor workplace culture or a general inability of the new hire to connect with the company.
When bringing a new hire on board there are some basic things you’ll want to ensure. They include providing an orientation of the office and surrounding areas, ensuring social integration with teams and also enabling them with the technology and passwords required to get started on the right foot. Using VR training for real life experience for parts of this process can be a great way to provide an interesting, engaging and positive onboarding experience. Consider having a full orientation of the company that the new hire could navigate through and understand without having to follow someone around the entire space. They would be able to focus on further areas of interest as well i.e. if they’ll be using the gym then they’ll want to know where that is.
High-Risk Training Simulations
Virtual reality is a great learning tool for training programs that involve high risk. Things like medical training, safety training or even military training are all great candidates. Without VR options available to learning departments would include in-class training which may be great instruction but not really provide learners with true experiential learning, online learning, which again could provide more of a simulation to increase engagement but would fall short of hands-on training or a blended approach. Consider a large manufacturing firm dealing with chemicals. Emergency protocol training may involve in-class sessions, microlearning modules for future support and lots of pamphlets, posters, and booklets. With VR, each employee could actually go through dealing with various emergencies, like a leak, break in protocol or emergency evacuation.
Soft Skills Training
Something that more and more companies are focusing efforts on, soft skills training is a great way to utilize virtual reality training.
The consistent increase in automation and technological advances in the workplace have displaced the soft skills that were never a second thought decades ago. In order to be successful however, organizations require their employees to excel at these enterprise skills and these are what many hiring managers and recruiters are looking for in their candidates.
Virtual reality is a great training modality to help build these transferrable skills across the organization and can offer very specific training content and experiences. Skills like Sales pitches, train the trainer, workplace mindfulness, business networking, managing workplace stress, presentation skills and more can all be customized to the role but also to the industry and specific needs of the learner.
Further to being able to offer a realistic simulation for the learner like a business networking event or a large meeting or conference where they will be speaking, learners can also upload their own content like presentations they’ll be giving, speeches or pitches. VR training provides instant feedback, guidance and tips for them to correct delivery along the way.
Recruitment Training
Finding the right fit for your company is a huge task. After all, hiring someone with the wrong skills, who doesn’t fit the culture or hiring someone and providing a poor candidate experience all result in thousands of dollars spent.
A survey by Glassdoor revealed that organizations that invest in delivering a strong candidate experience improve their quality of hire by 70%.
Training your recruitment teams on finding the right people for your organization is another great time to leverage VR training.
Simulating interviews can allow your teams to provide the right experience for candidates while also ensuring that they are communicating accurate messaging around the role, the company and the overall expectations.
Another great way to incorporate this technology into the recruitment process is during tradeshows and events where you want to draw in the crowd. Sharing the corporate experience with people through virtual reality can give them a real sense of what the brand is about and interest them to be part of it.
Virtual reality training is flexible across areas for learning departments if used in the right way and can greatly improve results. Before getting started however, companies need to truly understand what they want to achieve and see how VR can assist. Once ready, the investment can be made, and the virtual training can begin!