5 Benefits of Using Virtual Reality in Talent Development
Among the many technological advancements shaping today’s modern workplace is the concept of utilizing Virtual Reality (VR) in talent development. With many recent advances in its core technologies, VR usage extends far beyond the world of gaming and is proving to be an effective vehicle for optimizing business training and development. In addition to increasing efficiency, confidence, and skills, here are five benefits of integrating VR into your company’s corporate learning experience.
1. Ability to Simulate Real Environments
Take a moment to pause and reflect upon what your typical training environment looks like. Chances are, you’re envisioning a group of employees huddled around a conference table with a PowerPoint presentation displayed on a television or computer screen. Besides stifling their yawns, your employees are also restricted in terms of learning capacity. Basic presentations just don’t communicate the realities of the real world or have the same impact as being there. Virtual Reality enables teams to learn via practical experiences, like a modern improvement on roleplay-based training. Experiential learning is known for being one of the most effective ways of acquiring new knowledge and skills.
2. Strengthened Engagement Levels
Over the years, corporate education – from an employee perspective – has been perceived in a negative light, with words like, “boring” and a “waste of my time” becoming defining characteristics of these sessions. When immersive technology like VR is used in management training, however, it furnishes staff with the ability to step into real scenarios. And we do mean “step into” – VR is a truly immersive experience that allows participants to truly “be there” and even walk around to interact with the virtual environment and characters. By doing so, learners are no longer tempted by distractions or susceptible to “tuning out” the lesson. Instead, they have an opportunity to fully engage and participate in the scene taking place before them.
3. An Increase in Knowledge Retention
Why heavily invest in employee training and development if they don’t retain the information being relayed to them? Whether you’re teaching your technical team how to repair a new device, or you’re showing your bank employees how to handle an armed robbery, workers have the opportunity to learn through doing in an environment that’s safe and can be tailored to an individual’s skill level.
In many cases, the realism of VR can cause employees to form an emotional connection with the material being taught – effectively boosting engagement and knowledge retention. Scenarios are played out before their eyes, allowing them to take action and practice responding to situations rather than hearing about them from a hypothetical standpoint. Additionally, by using VR in management training, employees have the freedom to fail or make mistakes without negatively impacting the company or causing revenue loss.
4. Reduced Training & Development Costs
In a traditional training setting, businesses rely on new materials for each session as well as dedicated trainers and training environments with time blocks on everyone’s calendars. This can add up to significant ongoing expenses as well as productivity losses and general inconvenience for employees who really just want the best training with the least impact to their work time.. Virtual reality is a one-time cost that allows room for error without resulting in out-of-pocket expenses and can be done at employees’ convenience, or even at home for remote teams.
Implementing a VR solution for talent development can also help your business reduce travel costs. Whether you need to bring employees across different locations together for a training session or you need to fly an international candidate into the office to access their skill level, VR eliminates the need for staff to be together physically. That means expenses normally allocated towards things like airfare, transportation, hotel fees, food stipends, and more can now serve as budgeting for other business needs, such as marketing or advertising.
5. Exposure to Collaborative Scenarios
For training to be effective, it can’t just be a solo experience. Reading a manual or watching video tutorials doesn’t provide adequate insight into how workers should interact with others while on the job. Through a VR simulated environment, learners can become comfortable speaking or working with others. Not only will you be able to create hotspots for dialogs, but employees get the chance to personally practice interacting with clients and coworkers as opposed to reading a script or watching a pre-recorded video.
With VR technology, you can update, customize, and adjust your corporate training as needed without eating the cost of purchasing new materials. In a world where the workplace is ever-evolving, using VR in talent development allows you to keep up with new trends and changing needs in an efficient and cost-effective way.
The team at Concannon Business Consulting has been helping to integrate VR technology into an array of different businesses nationwide. If you’re interested in further exploring the improvements in VR and wondering how it may help improve your training methods, reach out to our team to explore options!
