The world is changing quickly with many new technologies on the horizon. Often it can be confusing as to whether the technology would make sense for an organization to use for their employee development.
Thriving Talents is committed to bringing the best of these technologies together so our clients can consider if these make sense for their organizations to use in training and developing their workforce.
In this article, we will explore Virtual Reality and its use cases. Organizations can then explore using these solutions to develop their employees.
What is VR?
If you have watched Ready Player One, you would get VR.
But if not, VR is a simulated 3D world where people can collaborate, communicate and create experiences together.
Imagine strapping on a VR headset and entering an environment such as a hotel, factory, or surgery operating table right in your living room.
This is not science fiction! The most well-known brands such as Nestle, Hilton, Ford, Shell, and DHL are using VR to make their training more effective and efficient.
How is VR used in training and development?
Traditionally, VR was thought to be great for technical training. This makes sense as you are dealing with 3D objects in your virtual world. For example, companies like DHL are using VR to train employees to load cargo more efficiently.
Since VR environments lend themselves to tracking every single movement a player makes, their analytics are powerful enough to show how improvements could be made in the process when someone is loading a piece of cargo
Challenges with VR:
Currently, the problem with VR environments is the high cost of creating and deploying the VR experience.
Expert programmers are needed to program these experiences, and headsets were out of reach of the everyday consumer.
Therefore VR was confined to D.I.C.E – Dangerous, Impossible, Counterproductive, and rare Events.
Meaning that experiences that met these D.I..C.E criteria would justify producing a VR experience to learn something.
For example, if Shell wanted to train their staff on how to handle a fire hazard, it would make sense for them to do it in VR, as that training was too dangerous to do in real life. Thus, VR for technical skills would still require many hours of programming.
Having said that, VR headsets are coming down in price. The Oculus Quest 2 headset, which is the most popular version, currently retails at around USD299, and many companies are striving to lower prices even further.
Most recently, Facebook, now Meta announced the Metaverse, where their vision is to get everyone to socialize in VR.
Apple, Microsoft, and almost every big tech company out there is fighting to lay claim to the Virtual Reality universe.
Oculus headsets have sold more than 10 million units and the highest downloaded app on the App store was the Oculus app right after Christmas, beating Tik Tok this year.
Suffice to say, VR is ‘Hot’ right now. We do not know how it will all pan out.
But, we know for sure that Facebook (Meta) is pouring billions into this project to make it happen in the next few years.
The idea is that they want everyone to own a headset and to socialize in the metaverse. Headsets are set to become as ubiquitous as the smart phone.
So, how about VR soft skills training and development? Interestingly enough, PWC recently released a study examining this very issue.
They found that soft skills training in VR was more immersive, and stayed longer in people’s memory. These sessions also helped participants to gain more confidence in applying these skills in real life after their soft skills simulation training.
In the long-Run PWC found that VR could scale better than traditional forms of training for leadership communication skills.
The Future of VR in Training:
We believe that VR will continue to come down in cost as more companies and consumers adopt the technology.
Developing experiences in VR, as well as headsets, will also decrease costs even further.
Given the realism and immersiveness of VR, we foresee that it will become an important way for HR and L&D to scale their training and development within their organizations.
Thriving Talents is committed to bringing the latest learning technologies to life. If you are interested in VR simulations to train leaders at scale in their Leadership Conversations within VR environments powered by Artificial Intelligence, please do not hesitate to drop us a note at whatsup@thrivingtalents.com
