Virtual reality has significantly transformed how companies are offering training to their employees. Virtual reality in employee training provides an interactive and immersive learning experience different from traditional methods.
It provides employees with hands-on practice, realistic simulations, and personalized learning, enhancing their skill development, knowledge retention, and overall performance. In this article, we explore the importance of VR and how it benefits employees and organizations across industries.
What is VR in Employee Training?
In virtual reality, your employees will experience what it is like to be in the real world, hence personalized on-the-job training. This eliminates the need for extended training programs involving stopping production, reviewing manuals, role-playing, or walkarounds.
Through immersive VR learning, employees practice the skills in a virtual environment, making them proficient. Additionally, immersive learning training and development in HRM offers data insights that are significantly more insightful than traditional methods. Managers can instantly know how their team performs in different programs and how to improve their performance if needed. Thus, it helps train people more quickly.
Industries Using VR for Employee Training
Many industries are using virtual reality to train their employees. Listed below are some use cases:
- Medical professionals use VR in the healthcare industry for medical training, making them proficient in complex medical procedures in a risk-free atmosphere.
- Retail and manufacturing industries have started using VR for customer service and safety training and development programs where real-world situations can easily be simulated.
- VR is also used in military training to prepare soldiers for difficult circumstances and dangerous situations.
Virtual Reality Training Benefits for Employees
Listed below are the top benefits of using virtual reality for employee training purposes:
1. Improves Customer Support
Knowledgeable customer-facing employees are essential for customer satisfaction. Companies going for VR customer service training can offer their employees on-demand practice of techniques and soft skills, allowing them to become more efficient in their jobs. Skills like communication and empathy are challenging to teach. However, with the VR training management system, employees can refine these skills in a controlled, safe, and judgment-free environment.
2. Safe Training Environment
Virtual reality gives employees a safe atmosphere to learn new skills and become proficient without damaging the equipment or any risk of injury. Such an environment is beneficial in industries where employees must deal with hazardous materials or operate heavy machinery.
3. Improving Engagement and Retention
VR training can be tailored to meet the specific needs of an individual or a group. For instance, VR training modules can familiarize new employees with company procedures and policies. Similarly, employee skill development with VR training modules can happen for experienced people and keep them engaged. Besides, employees also get instant feedback, which could take days or weeks in traditional methods. This helps employees to work on their performance and learn from their mistakes. Thus, keeping them satisfied and happy improves the company’s retention rates.
4. Lowers Training Costs
VR training eliminates needing a designated physical space, highly qualified instructors, and materials. A PwC research states that VR training can reduce training costs by 52%. Employees can access this training using VR headsets, which only require a small designated area or even no area if it is taken at home. Even though there is an initial equipment cost attached, the below reasons make it cost-effective:
- It eliminates the expense of fixing trainee’s mistakes.
- It enhances productivity as employees learn faster in a VR environment.
- It offers remote training options, allowing you to be trained from any location.
PwC research even stated that virtual reality is expected to deliver a £1.4 trillion boost to the economy by 2030, making this learning a future trend and need.
5. Develops Presentation Skills
One of the significant benefits of VR in training is improving an employee’s presentation skills. For example, employees often have to use various data points to explain a complex product that may result in losing a client.
Companies can use VR simulations to train new employees to articulate their value proposition when pitching customers. They can use VR to learn story-telling and practice client presentations with VR-based avatars.
Conclusion
Many companies have started implementing virtual reality as an essential tool for corporate training. From medical procedures to public speaking to training for complex and dangerous situations, VR can provide your employees with a safe and realistic training environment.
Although there is an initial cost, companies are realizing the long-term cost efficiency and return on investment regarding safety, engagement, and retention in training programs. There is no doubt that VR training will become more familiar with the development in the VR industry.