Across all industries, virtual reality (VR) is helping HR managers and business leaders reinvent their approach to vocational development by fusing traditional training approaches with more immersive, experiential learning.
Using VR simulations modeled on real-world challenges, businesses can see exactly how effective their training modules are before workers are faced with the real thing. Once standardised, this kind of immersive training can lead to higher levels of proficiency, reduced onboarding times, fewer incidents, and a better standard of output in all areas.
If you’re planning to revisit your approach to training and wondering what this kind of technology can do for your SME, here are four key ways that VR can be used to improve training outcomes for small and medium businesses.
Better Workplace Safety
Workplace safety is crucial across all sectors, but in some industries, like construction and hospitality, health and safety challenges are an almost daily occurrence.
VR training is an excellent tool for giving workers experience with performing routine safety checks, identifying common workplace hazards, and carrying out routine processes with the proper diligence.
Traditional safety training in a workplace environment will get you some of the way in familiarising employees with the safety challenges they’ll face on a day-to-day basis. However, it’s harder to deliver effective training for challenges and incidents that are less common with higher stakes, and require employees to act quickly to guard their safety and the safety of their colleagues.
With custom VR training modules, especially when combined with supporting tech like Scan to BIM (a process that uses laser scanning to create accurate 3D models of real-world environments), trainers can put employees in highly realistic and emotionally immersive situations. These scenarios will look and feel that much closer to real life, encouraging automatic muscle memory and improving outcomes on the job.
Lower Turnover
While giving employees the skills they need to perform is certainly important, the fast-paced world of SMEs often causes leaders to prioritise practical skills over workers’ mental and emotional well-being. Over time, this can increase turnover, disrupting the business’s operations and increasing its recurring costs.
Immersive VR training can help new hires acclimatise to the responsibilities of the job, helping them feel less overwhelmed by the challenges they’ll face and more confident in tackling the tasks that keep your business running.
With virtual reality business training tailored to your business, employees will experience the sights and sounds of where they’ll be working on a daily basis. This helps them fully comprehend the nature of their work and the potential difficulties they might face.
When it’s implemented correctly, this kind of training program will give new hires more accurate expectations about the job, reduce surprises, and significantly decrease the chances of employees leaving the job unexpectedly due to mental exhaustion.
More Efficient Onboarding
Efficient onboarding helps new employees to adapt to their environment faster, and maximises the amount their work contributes to the business’s bottom line. Slow and poorly executed onboarding, on the other hand, will only increase the cost of a new hire and create obstacles in their attempts to settle into a role.
The hands-on experience virtual reality business solutions can offer ensures that employees can grasp essential skills and challenges in a shorter space of time, and start reaching their potential faster.
This is an especially important benefit for SMEs going through rapid periods of growth. Taking on large numbers of new employees in short timeframes multiplies the junctures where things can go wrong, and makes fast, effective onboarding even more important.
With virtual reality business training, managers can not only improve the quality of training received by new hires but also reduce the need for in-person direction and support for each employee. This will support your efforts to free up bandwidth and keep processes efficient during high-pressure periods of growth.
Better Soft Skills and Empathy
Outside of safety, procedure, and compliance, VR can also be a powerful tool for helping employees develop the interpersonal capabilities that support every process at your business.
Realistic simulations of workplace scenarios, such as handling customer complaints, performance reviews, and team problem-solving, can help your employees develop their emotional intelligence, communication skills, and other soft skills to ensure better outcomes.
Traditional roleplays have been useful for past generations of employees to develop soft skills through experience. Still, VR training takes this a step further with emphasis on perspective-taking for better emotional engagement.
Retail giant Walmart, for example, is known to employ virtual reality business solutions for workplace training programs that train its retail associates, putting them in scenarios where they have to interact with disgruntled or angry customers.
These training sessions wrap up by letting the trainee review the interaction from the customer’s point of view, adding another dimension to the scenario and giving workers a greater perspective on their interpersonal skills.
By giving your new hires a safe, immersive environment to practice in, you can help teams across the organisation understand less obvious communication cues, hone conflict resolution, and improve every interpersonal interaction they’re a part of.
Optimising Training Outcomes With Quality VR Training
Virtual reality business solutions aren’t just an interesting technological gimmick to introduce to your training. When implemented correctly, they can be a highly effective method to help employees approach their jobs with confidence, empower them with stronger soft skills, and react to unexpected scenarios effectively.
Whether you’re about to embark on an ambitious hiring drive or just want to maximise the potential of your current training programs with a new approach, we hope this guide has helped you understand what VR training implementation might look like at your organisation.
For more support with delivering the training your workforce needs, be sure to check out our other blog posts, online courses, and webinars today!
