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More companies are embracing virtual reality training to teach employees interpersonal skills, such as how to be more empathic, practical skills like how to unload a trailer, and health and safety skills like how to handle an active shooter incident.
Walmart, for one, has been using VR training for the past six years, as part of its greater training and development strategy. “It’s one piece of the puzzle,” Jennifer Buchanan, vice president of Walmart Academy, said.
Walmart associates receive VR training alongside in-person, computer and on-demand training. “It’s important that the right associate gets the right training at the right time over the right modality,” she said.
As a seasoned user of the technology, Buchanan recommends organizations seeking to use virtual reality in their training programs first determine how presenting the training in VR, instead of in-person or online, will help the company solve a business problem.
Here are a few ideas to consider for HR and business leaders considering VR training.
VR Training Use Cases
Using the example of Walmart, Buchanan said the company uses VR training to role play real-life scenarios, a difficult situation or a new process. And according to her metrics, most Walmart associates report feeling better prepared at work after taking VR training.
She’s not the only one to have observed the trend. A September 2022 study by PwC found employees feeling 245% more confident when applying the skills they learned from VR training, which is 79% more confident than after classroom training.
That’s because the main use case of VR training is to teach a skill that is difficult to replicate on a computer or in a classroom, said Aneesh Kulkarni, CTO of VR learning company Strivr. For instance, the company developed a VR training program for one of its customers, a logistics company, to teach new employees how to unload a trailer.
VR allows employees to experience the environment they will be working in, so they can see the actual structure and layout of the plant and be ready to hit the ground running on their very first day at work, he said.
VR can also be used to help employees develop interpersonal skills such as allowing customer service representatives to practice difficult conversations or teaching knowledge workers how to recognize bias during hiring and interviewing.
Scott Likens, global AI and innovation technology leader at PwC, said at his firm, VR training covers both soft and hard skills, depending on the goal of the training. For instance, PwC has a VR training program that includes experiences where an employee is placed in the shoes of another person, allowing them to experience a specific event in a more personal way, he said. In some other VR training programs, the company creates a virtual space that replaces an in-person classroom and allows PwC to bring remote employees together to collaborate.
Related Article: How Virtual Reality Can Power Immersive Learning
Benefits of VR Training
Integrating virtual reality into learning and development programs has a number of benefits.
For one, VR training typically takes less time than traditional computer-based or instructor-led training, Buchanan said. That’s mainly because it’s immersive, so there are no distractions that would require employees to have to multitask while participating in the training.
Kulkarni said VR training is also more engaging. Employees are more likely to look away from their computers or answer their phone when they’re completing online training, as opposed to virtual reality.
Both offer benefits in line with the findings of the PwC study, which has found that VR training is in fact four times faster than classroom training and four times more focused than e-learning.
Kulkarni said Strivr clients have benefited greatly from VR training. He shared some of the stats with us:
- 97% of employees at a large telecommunications firm felt more prepared for dangerous situations after taking VR training.
- A large retailer saw a 96% reduction in training time with VR.
- A grocery store saw an 81% reduction in onboarding time from four hours to 45 minutes.
Another reason why VR training is so effective, according to Kulkarni, is that employees go over a scenario more than once, allowing them to make mistakes, try out a different response or repeat the scenario until they are comfortable, he said. “Employers would rather have employees make a mistake when they’re wearing the headset than in real life.”
Related Article: Can You Trust AI to Revolutionize Corporate Training?
Another Reason? Employees Enjoy VR Training
Employee response to VR training is overwhelmingly positive, Buchanan said. And employees say it’s the closest they can get to experiencing it in real time. “Because they can hear it, see it and read it at the same time, it is hitting all learning senses,” she said.
That’s another statistic uncovered by the PwC study: Employees say they are 3.75 times more emotionally connected to VR content than classroom training.
In fact, at the consultancy, 75% of employees who participated in the “In My Shoes” training reported a “wake up” call moment during the training, and 78% of all users wanted more VR training, Likens said.
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Buchanan said the main thing to ensure, when integrating the technology, is that the training is designed with the user in mind. “Not everyone is a gamer, so make sure it’s easy to use,” she said.
The concept may still be only now gaining traction at organizations, but Kulkarni is already envisioning a future where every employee has a headset on their desk, alongside their phone and laptop. It would serve more than training purposes, too. Managers could use VR as a personal coach to prepare them for a difficult conversation with an employee, for instance, or employees can use VR when they need to decompress by completing a VR meditation, he said.
Time will tell on that, but for now, companies would be wise to consider whether adding a virtual reality component to their L&D programs could improve outcomes.
