If you’re considering remote training for your teams as a result of COVID-19 disruption, you’re not alone. Organisations around the world are focusing more attention on tech, systems and applications that enable distance working and operations. In a world where crises are common, it’s risk reduction and makes business sense.
– Is VR and AR training a wise investment?
– Industries and businesses that are using VR and AR training
– The investment checklist – how to know if you should go for VR or AR training
– Next step – get a consultation
– Training for now and the future
Is VR and AR training a wise investment?
VR and AR training offers incredible benefits, mainly the complete control it gives you over your training programmes, eliminating issues around productivity disruption, environment availability and employee travel. Immersive training also offers scalability, personalisation, data capture and user engagement that traditional training just can’t compete with. But it’s not necessarily right for every company that needs to train people.
To help you get an idea whether extended reality training is a wise investment for your business, we’ve put together this short guide.
We won’t go on about the business advantages of VR and AR training; we’ll assume you know all that, as you’re here. What you need to know is: will your specific business benefit from investing money, time and energy into extended reality training technology, instead of carrying on with traditional sessions? The next part of this guide will help you answer that question.
Industries and businesses that are using VR and AR training
Industries that are using extended reality training right now include Renewables, Logistics, Manufacturing, Marine, Petrochemical, Medical, Retail and Sports – across core abilities, soft skills, HR, Health and Safety, and Operations.
If your employees carry out procedures or tasks that simply cannot be accurately recreated in the training room, then VR or AR training is ideal for your business. These tasks could include performing medical procedures, operating heavy equipment, or emergency situation training. Extended reality is also excellent for customer service training, allowing employees to ‘be the customer’ and experience their point of view.
The investment checklist – how to know if you should go for VR or AR training
Is your training led by skilled team members on the ‘shop floor’?
If you usually rely on experienced team members training your staff actually on the machinery or in the working environment, then immersive technology can replace this. It is able to accurately recreate situations that are hard to replicate and can take learning experiences to the next level by offering multiple ‘loadable’ scenarios in that situation.
Do you have to train a lot of people?
Creating training environments, hiring a venue, getting employees to the venue, pulling experienced staff away from work to deliver the sessions – large-scale training costs money and considerable productivity. If your business needs to do this, immersive training allows you to ‘replay’ training over and over to different groups of staff in your own building. Keeping costs, and your carbon footprint, down, and allowing staff to get to and from the training environment quickly, meaning less time away from work.
Does your training depend on access to specific environments?
If you need a particular workspace, venue or environment in order to carry out your training, you can be impacted by availability, transport, weather and more, with delays costing additional money. VR and AR tech negates the risks to your training going ahead, allowing you to keep your workspaces working and earning income, rather than ‘down’ due to training. Additionally, training can occur anytime, not just when the workspace is available.
Does your business have different teams that need unique training?
In any business of a decent size, you’re going to have groups of staff performing unique functions, meaning you’ll need multiple training programs, sessions, leaders and possibly venues. If this is your organisation, extended reality training will remove significant costs and downtime through the ability to host multiple training programs on one system, accessible anytime, wherever there’s a headset and internet connection.
Do you need to (or would you like to) update training frequently?
As well as providing you with invaluable user-data to support training evolution, VR and AR tech also allows you to implement any insights quicker and more easily. As your training is software-based, new industry standards can be implemented in hours, keeping your staff up to date, compliant and putting your operations ahead of the competition.
Extended reality environments also give you the ability to accurately gauge the effectiveness of the training, monitoring and reporting eye movements, situational awareness and actions. It also helps you understand user engagement in the training, providing data on attendance, course completion and tracked improvement through a course.
Next step – get a consultation
Now you’ve got an idea of whether VR and AR training is right for your business, the next step is to see how it could work, understand the cost and discover the benefits. Get a consultation from an immersive tech specialist, ask any questions you might have, and get them to explain how the training software and technology would work together for your specific needs.
Introducing extended reality training to your organisation may feel intimidating or out of your wheelhouse, that’s perfectly normal. A good specialist in this area will do all of the hard work, from initial research through to set up, adoption and support with day-to-day use. You can always start small with one department to see if investing business-wide in immersive training is right for you.
Training for now and the future
The coronavirus pandemic has left businesses operating with geographically scattered staff and employees simply unable to work at all. At a time like this, when equipment and work environments are inaccessible, VR and AR tech can deliver training online anywhere in the world, keeping staff productive, developing skills and ready to hit the ground running when business as usual returns.
