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Virtual Reality Training in the Workplace

Virtual Reality (VR) heralds the next development in the evolution of staff training. These sophisticated technologies deliver engaging training modules and an unrivalled power to significantly advance the learning capabilities and performance levels of your employees. 2D and 3D simulations will revolutionise the workplace in a number of ways; enhance staff training, engage employees, improve customer services, deliver a unique customer experience and more.

With VR technology, organisations have advanced tools that enable you to reconstruct real-life scenarios your employees will experience during the course of their employment. As a training application, VR simulations expose users to a fully immersive experience that unequivocally enhances staff training. Animated graphics make dry topics more engaging and the visuals mean trainees retain more information – which means they learn faster!

What’s more, VR training modules provide trainees with a safe environment in which they can make mistakes without any risk to the individual or the business. Trainers can also access valuable data about trainees. During training exercises, you will be able to record the on-screen performance of trainees and also observe how they physically react to certain situations. This enables trainers to determine stress levels, competence, attitude and anything else you want to measure. As a result, you can customise ongoing training that is specifically tailored for individuals rather than blanket training for groups.

Our VR technology and creative skills provide businesses with the opportunity to create controlled environments that prepare your staff to master new skills understand their role and performa their job effectively.

If you want to know how VR can transform your workplace training modules, download our free Q&A guide or contact us today and speak with one of our friendly advisors.

Benefits of Training Employees With Virtual Reality

VR employee training applications provide real-world insights that help trainees:

• Understand their roles and improve performance
• Gain experience of dealing with customers and improve relations through rehearsed interactions
• Operate machinery safely or use ‘tools of the trade’ effectively
• Expedite learning, training and education
• Impact, retain and understand customer satisfaction
• Feel more confident about their role and your company

For businesses, VR training modules:

• Provide trainers with valuable insights that enable you to mould training for individuals
• Engage staff and improve retention
• Provides data that facilitates succession planning
• Improve productivity and quality of work
• Acquire insights into product development
• Enhance onboarding to assess ideal candidates
• Significantly reduce costs typically associated with conventional training modules and recruitment processes

It’s clear that VR training applications give trainees and organisations critical advantages that helps drive the performance and success of your business. By the time your trainees go live, they will already feel confident about their ability to perform their job role successfully. What’s more, businesses have a powerful tool that enables you to train employees to reach high levels of performance that meet the expectations of your company and your customers.

Advantages of VR Over Other Training Modules

Conventional training modules have limitations. The majority of content trainers cover in a typical training environment is forgotten before trainees even leave the classroom. Studies show that 70% of the information people are told in traditional learning environments is lost within a day. After six days, the average trainee will have forgotten 75% of what they were told. Regardless of your training style – visual, auditory, tactical, and kinaesthetic – classical training cannot match the power for learning that virtual reality training modules delivers. Scientific research has shown the average person remembers 8.8 per cent more after using VR headsets. In one study, 40% of the participants scored 10 per cent or more in recall accuracy than they did using visuals on a desktop.

The critical advantage virtual reality headsets have over computer-based and classroom training is engagement. Because users are fully focused on the training event, they are not distracted by anything else that is happening in the room around them. VR goggles are designed to cover eyes and ears so that the senses of the user is fully immersed in the training module. Simulations essentially trick the brain into believing the visuals users see on screen is actually happening. What’s more, VR training modules repeat scenarios precisely. This repetition reinforces the information trainees need to know and enables trainers to shape their behaviour.

In a VR role-play situation, trainers can see precisely how trainees react to specific situations and help them refine their response before engaging with the VR training again. In classical training environments, skillsets can be quite difficult to hone because the situation is hypothetical. Not only that, but participants have shown they feel less stressed and embarrassed performing role-plays when wearing VR headsets. Being confronted by 3D animated characters is far less inhibiting than face-to-face interactions with humans. This is because VR simulations provide users with a non-judgemental space to rehearse behaviours and handle difficult situations without any time pressure or fear of making a mistake.

It’s no secret that people learn from experience. Because VR enables you to build extreme environments and situations, trainees can master procedures, equipment and dealing with customers without any danger or severe consequences. VR training models have clear advantages for both employers and employees.

Higher Retention And Reduced Training Costs

The rivalry for top talent in today’s job market is becoming more critical as companies look to make the transition from traditional operations into the digital age. Tech-savvy millennials already account for around 50% of the workforce in the UK. Now Generation Z is entering the workforce, the tech generations will create 75% of the workforce in 2025. And the younger generations expect companies to be as technologically advanced as they are.

Organisations that offer virtual reality as part of the training package increase their pulling power. In-depth training also sends a positive signal to employees – you are invested in the development of their careers! As a result, employees are more engaged, motivated and committed to the company. VR also reduces the practical costs of carrying out training programs by eliminating the need for multiple personnel, travel expenses, remuneration for relocation, damage and repairs to overused equipment or third-party training courses.

Industries That Are Benefitting From VR Technology

Although virtual reality technology is more available to companies today, some industries embraced VR in the early stages – and by doing so, discovered multiple benefits and uses.

Sliced Bread Animation is proud to have worked with a number of leading organisations in key industries. Below are just a few examples of how our VR simulations have made an impact.

VR Training In The Medical Industry

Healthcare professionals receive the best training possible with VR simulations – experiences that mimic real-life. There is no better way to learn complex procedures than actually performing them, so you can imagine how beneficial 3D simulations are for surgeons. We have even created 3D animations that show medical students precisely how specific parts of the body work and what patients with certain conditions experience. VR has also been used to help treat patients. A growing number of medical institutions are using VR applications to treat patients for PTSD, overcome fears, manage pain, rehabilitation after a stroke or serious injury and to help improve the quality of life for people that suffer from a disability.

Benefits of VR for Pharmaceutical Companies

3D animation provides physicians and chemists with a better understanding of invisible diseases. Virtual reality models have given pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to analyse huge amounts of data which helps with the development of drugs, treatments and therapies. Thanks to in-depth insights analysts get from visualising complex data, Pharma innovation is far more efficient. As a result, pharmaceutical products are safer, more affordable and take less time to enter the market.

Financial Firms Are Introducing More VR Applications

The financial industry notoriously struggles to provide high-quality service and customers are increasingly disillusioned with the banking sector. VR has been deployed in various ways to improve customer experience and customer relations and is also proving to be a powerful tool for training staff and recruiting top talent. Financial institutes are using VR to demonstrate how innovative and tech-savvy their company really is, help employees develop skills and knowledge, and how to interact with difficult customers.

VR Has Multiple Benefits For The Construction Industry

The construction company is rife with complex building techniques together with health and safety issues – all of which can be addressed in a virtual reality simulation. By creating realistic scenarios – even in all types of weather conditions – help to show new recruits the ropes in a safe and secure environment. VR enables construction trainees to experience active building sites without stepping outside the training room. They can learn how to navigate tight corners, practice complex basket positioning and understand how to work safely at elevated heights. Multi-player capability also enables colleagues to work together as a team and co-ordinate operations.

Engineering Firms Embracing VR

The virtual world simulates real-life learning and provides critical insights for engineers. Firms can use VR to create controlled environments that allow you to see potential dangers whilst reducing risks and costs. VR technologies have enabled engineers to identify inconsistencies with structural designs that would have been expensive to repair at a later date. In addition, practising how to use machinery in a VR simulator eliminates the risk of accidentally damaging or overusing machinery.

How Companies Are Using Virtual Reality To Train Staff

Virtual reality applications have already made an impact on corporate training modules, helping employees to raise their performance, reduce the stress of live situations and improve the consumer experience.

Customer Services – Gauging customer satisfaction by reading body language and diffusing negative situations with rehearsed responses.

Understand Customers – Practice empathy to enable employees to get closer to customers

Technical Training – Improve skills, introduce procedures, and enhance performance by identifying skills that need to be developed

Presentation Training – Help employees manage stress and build confidence by learning how to effectively perform public speaking

Marketing – Create exciting content and provide consumers with real-life insights and experiences of your product

Work Equipment – Enables trainees to operate equipment proficiently without the risk of damage or injury

Visual Product Development – Allows engineers and designers to plan full-scale models and optimise the manufacturing or building process

Dealing With Hostility – Teach employees how to hold their nerve, behave and mentally cope in dangerous or hostile situations

The Potential For Virtual Reality in the Future Workplace

VR technology has already made a significant impact on numerous firms across multiple industries. And we’ve only just started to realise the potential of this groundbreaking technology. There is a lot more to come from VR is the near and distant future.

Interactive Meetings

International companies with offices all around the world and firms that advocate remote working policies will not have any problems bringing the team or co-workers together for meetings. In interactive VR chambers, there will not be any difference between the real world and the virtual world. Sensors in VR headsets translate body language and non-verbal cues that are typically missed with standard teleconferencing software such as Skype and Zoom. You can even install a translation suite and overcome language barriers.

Connect And Collaborate

With the rise in flexible hours, remote working and contracting freelancers to collaborate on projects, sophisticated VR technologies will make it possible for colleagues to collaborate in 3D simulators and make them feel they are sharing the same space – even if they are on the opposite side of the planet.

Find The Right Person For The Job

It is estimated the average cost of recruiting new staff members costs an average of £11,000. One of the challenges HR teams face today is recruiting the right people and encouraging them to stay in the job once training has been administered. By employing VR simulations as part of the recruitment process, interviewers can assess whether applicants have the right skillsets, attitude and personality you are looking for. It also gives you a chance to make a great first impression and increase your chances of improving retention rates.

Why Sliced Bread Animation?

Creating animated videos has been our life’s work. Slipping into the world of virtual reality was a natural progression. Our first VR project was in 2014 and we have worked on numerous other projects since then, partnering with specialists in the fields of pharmaceuticals, medical, engineering, construction, security and marketing to name a few.

For clients that are new to VR, experiencing the technology and trying to understand how it will work for your business can feel unwieldy at first. Early discussions with team members will often throw up conflicting views and opinions.

To help you overcome these early challenges, we arrange a one-day workshop in which we address key points:

• Determine the target audience
• Set expectations and envisage what success looks like
• Experience applications (Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Vive)
• Organise the creative approach
• Shape the message you want to deliver and decide what the key audience takeaways will be

We appreciate you may still have a lot of questions about how VR can be effectively applied to your business so we have put together a useful guide that sets out to resolve typical issues. You can download “Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Reality” for free.

In the Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Reality guide you will discover:

• How VR engages the audience
• The benefits of providing fun and engaging content
• How VR significantly improves staff training modules

Prefer to talk?

If you still have any questions or you’re interested in how Sliced Bread can help create virtual reality employee training, contact us now on +44 (0)207 148 0526