What can VR do for corporate training?
How will VR change corporate training?
With a retention and comprehension rate of 75%* (compared to audiovisual at 20%*) it’s clear why organisations are embracing VR to increase learning quality. And the benefits don’t stop there — VR offers significant cost-saving benefits too — add increased engagement and better analytics and it’s easy to understand why the VR training market is predicted to grow to $6.3 billion US by 2022.
But, maybe the biggest benefit of VR in corporate training is it allows you to fail — to learn through mistakes. Making mistakes in a physical environment can be a costly, impactful and embarrassing experience, but doing so in VR allows the trainee to understand what the results of error would be in the real realm and how to stop it from occurring.
One interesting set of use cases lies in crisis replication. Within aviation, there is an enormous benefit to a new member of cabin crew being able to ‘hit the ground running’ when they first board a plane. In VR, trainees can run through an entire evacuation procedure, start to finish, and see all the outcomes of their various actions unfold in front of them; they can learn how to deal with tricky passengers or a medical emergencies on descent.
How can VR help save money on corporate training?
The potential cost savings of adopting VR for training are myriad, and maybe none more so than within aviation where training staff can include the cost of time, employee travel, building mockups, transporting equipment, real estate and the huge cost of grounding a plane. With margins as tight as they are — less than $6 per passenger — it’s no surprise to see airlines, like American, using VR to deliver efficient, self-paced and engaging VR programmes.
The ROI on digitally recreating assets like planes for VR gives organisations a dynamic, future-proof, multi-purpose asset that can be used across training (to train new cabin crew), design (to experiment with new materials, branding and layouts) and marketing (to deliver engaging, narrative-driven experiences or assets for web and print). Airlines like British Airways are ahead of the curve in this respect and on their way to having a fully digitally re-created fleet.
The future? Technology will transform air travel into a seamless and efficient experience with processes underpinned by VR-only training. What’s more, it’s VR will facilitate the gradual phasing out of centralised human-heavy training programmes — where classroom and examination environments currently rely inherently on people to deliver training and score progress, VR training will be remote, decentralised, self-paced experiences that are superior in quality and efficiency.
What makes VR so efficient as a training tool?
Much of the efficiency of VR is intertwined with the ‘fun factor’, and how immersive the experience is. Let’s first look at what it’s up against — currently, airlines deliver training predominantly through a highly physical infrastructure (either a flight training centre or a grounded aircraft). Aside from being very cost-heavy, these training methods have been the same for several years and have enjoyed little innovation.
VR is a medium that allows for a whole new means of educating people, in aviation and in many other sectors outside it. To be able to scale training to people’s homes, allow the delivery of remote classes and even remote exams, will allow more people to become better equipped and more highly skilled more easily — and at a good time, too, considering that around 50% of business leaders currently identify skills shortages as a key workforce challenge.
Written for The Virtual Reality Marketing blog as part of The VR Expert Panel series.
