9 VR training benefits

Like many technologies disrupting the enterprise, VR training is rewriting the rules by fusing corporate training with experiential learning. VR training, in the form of immersive learning, combines the ability to simulate real-world training scenarios in a VR headset with the ability to accurately measure performance. For all kinds of companies across industries, this technology has created a paradigm shift. Now, organizations know exactly how effective their training is — and whether employees have learned what they need to know before throwing them into a real-world scenario.

At a high level, VR training benefits also include a faster speed to proficiency, reduced onboarding time, improved customer service, a higher degree of workplace safety, decreased turnover, fewer costly incidents, and an easier way to teach culture quickly. VR training benefits also include a critical lessening of business interruptions, so learning doesn’t get in the way of business.

Here’s a closer look at the nine VR training benefits that companies can experience in terms of cost savings, operational efficiency, and employee engagement.

01. Improve customer service

There are so many factors that go into customer satisfaction, one of which is well-prepared customer-facing employees. Customer service training in VR provides employees on-demand practice of soft skills and techniques to be effective and productive in their jobs. Critically, customer service also requires a mastery of certain soft skills, such as empathy and communication, which can be tough to teach. With VR, learners can practice and refine their customer service skills in a safe, controlled, judgement-free environment until they feel comfortable and confident to bring those skills to the sales floor.

For instance, one major financial institution came to Strivr because its call center agents regularly faced difficult and emotional financial conversations with customers. Strivr created an immersive learning course that allowed the call center agents to practice both critical thinking and valuable soft skills — two important skills to have when faced with challenging customer conversations.

VR training quickly helped the financial institution better train employees, which resulted in a 10% increase in customer satisfaction ratings in under 6 months. It also gave the organization’s Learning & Development (L&D) leaders insight into gaps in training and skill levels so they could continuously improve training options over time.

02. Accelerate speed to proficiency

To roll out innovation that provides a competitive edge, training needs to be done at scale, consistently and efficiently. VR training is an effective replacement for instructor-led and on-the-job training because it significantly reduces time spent training without sacrificing effectiveness or engagement.

Walmart

When Walmart wanted to introduce an in-store pickup option via new Pickup Tower, leaders worried about maintaining a consistently strong customer experience. They could not afford a lack of consistency or long customer wait times while employees got used to the new technology and procedures.

Crucially, VR training can be put in place before new equipment and technologies are rolled out, which removes interruptions to the regular flow of business. By training associates on how to use, manage, and troubleshoot the new Pickup Tower equipment in VR, Walmart dramatically shortened the amount of time required for employees to achieve proficiency with the new technology by 96%, from 8 hours to just 15 minutes. Read the Walmart customer story to learn more.

03. Reduce onboarding time

The quicker a new employee can be properly trained, the faster they can contribute to the bottom line. The longer it takes, the more expensive each new hire becomes. VR training benefits new employees by providing realistic training in a virtual world, which ensures mastery more quickly than many traditional types of training do. New hires gain the necessary knowledge and skills faster, and they’re on the job quicker.

Sprouts Farmer's Market

As a result of the pandemic, Sprouts Farmer's Market found itself needing to hire thousands of new employees quickly, even as protocols were changing to keep everyone as protected and healthy as possible. Faster, safer onboarding was critical to meeting customer needs during a challenging time.

With VR, Sprouts reduced new hire onboarding time by 81%, from 4 hours to 45 minutes. Most importantly, Sprouts can now continue to hire as needed and onboard new people in an ad-hoc way, because the company no longer relies on an approach that requires days-long group instruction or travel. Learn more about how Sprouts leveraged Strivr's immersive learning solutions to expedite onboarding at scale by reading the Sprouts customer story.

04. Improve workplace safety

Workplace safety is incredibly important. In some industries, safety issues come up daily: the ability to spot hazards in a warehouse or on a job site, food safety rules in the hospitality industry, PPE safety for healthcare workers. In all of these cases, VR training benefits learners by giving them practice with safety procedures, hazard identification, food safety, lockout-tagout procedures, and more. But workplace safety training isn’t always straightforward.

For customer-facing employees to thrive, they need to feel confident and prepared, even in the most high-stakes situations such as an armed robbery. The problem with training for events that won’t come up in everyday work, but which require employees to act automatically in the moment, is that traditional types of training are not very effective. Even role playing does not pack enough of an emotional impact to truly ingrain the soft skills employees will need if faced with a rare emergency.

VR training, on the other hand, immerses the learner in a highly realistic, emotionally charged situation in a safe environment that looks and feels like real life, so it makes a big impact on learning.

Verizon

Verizon adopted immersive learning to better protect and prepare frontline retail associates with the skills and hands-on experience necessary to act quickly and confidently in the event of an armed robbery situation. By teaching employees how to manage emotions, the company emphasized what was most important: the safety of their employees and customers.

By training in VR, Verizon's frontline retail associates gained hands-on experience in executing the critical steps to de-escalate a high-stakes armed robbery situation and making the right decisions under intense pressure. As a result, 97% of Verizon's 22,000+ frontline retail associates reported feeling more confident and prepared to safely navigate dangerous situations in real life after VR training. Read the Verizon customer story to learn more.

05. Decrease turnover

By giving learners a realistic preview of what to expect before stepping into a new role, VR training gives new hires a chance to acclimate and mentally prepare for their new responsibilities and job site so they are less likely to feel overwhelmed from the start. In the headset, trainees are exposed to the sights, sounds, and atmosphere of their future workplace. When every employee can get the same realistic preview of the job experience, there are no surprises when they report to work on day one, which dramatically reduces the likelihood of turnover and increases retention rates.

For a global shipping company Strivr worked with, loading dock workers turned over at an exceptionally high rate, often because they did not fully comprehend the nature of the work they would be doing. In some cases, new hires would quit on the spot the same day they started. Immersive learning in VR improved training consistency and leveled the expectations of trainees. Now, not only are new hires extremely excited and intrigued by the training, but the shipping company has doubled the retention rates of loading dock workers.

06. Decrease incident costs

One powerful remedy to create a safer workplace is better workforce preparation, and simply giving employees a manual or workbook to read is subpar in this area. VR training benefits companies by allowing their employees to practice critical job skills in a realistic environment without putting them or anyone else at risk before they’re up to speed. It helps develop situational and spatial awareness that leads to safer workplace behaviors, fewer incidents, and reduced costs.

Strivr created an immersive learning program for a multi-national food processor to train employees to work safely and efficiently on the line and practice safe behaviors in the virtual plant environment. After just 15 minutes of immersive training, 89% of employees reported feeling more prepared to handle safety hazards at work.

07. Scale culture & core values

As onboarding becomes increasingly more remote, it’s more challenging to communicate brand values and engage employees in company culture. VR training benefits L&D organizations by offering real world experience with company values. For both new employees and as a refresher for experienced employees, VR can help create and improve brand consistency around customer experience.

This is particularly important because VR training is a unique medium of experiential learning that, in many ways, transcends language and cultural barriers. Culture and brand can be taught in an embodied way — not an academic one.

Sprouts Farmer's Market

For instance, VR training helps Sprouts Farmer's Market scale its unique customer-centric culture and core values in a standardized way, all while reinforcing the importance of customer service. When new hires were tested on their conceptual understanding of Sprouts' core values, 48% of VR learners recalled all six values perfectly, compared to only 3% who trained using traditional methods, demonstrating 16X greater learning retention. VR learners even outperformed senior managers who had trained under the old learning model. Read the Sprouts customer story to learn more.

08. Eliminate business interruptions

Whether it’s pulling an employee off the sales floor or paying for an aircraft to be taken out of commission, training can be a significant disruption to normal operations. VR training benefits companies by giving on-demand access to high value material anywhere, anytime, and providing effective training in the flow of business.

JetBlue

At JetBlue, VR training gave ground technicians valuable practice on A320 aircraft inspection, building the capability to identify key mistakes on a “dirty” plane and ingrain the correct order of processes. VR training provided technicians with hands-on practice and experience in conducting inspections on a virtual aircraft identical to the real one, which would have cost the company $10,000 a day to rent for training purposes.

09. Unparalleled insights & analytics

Perhaps one of the most valuable VR training benefits is the ability to capture training data and provide valuable insights that can inform future training sessions and other aspects of L&D. With Strivr’s immersive learning platform, there are several types of data captured from learners in the headset. These include usage data on who uses the training and for how long, as well as performance data that demonstrates how individual and collective learners perform in each module.

Strivr can also collect attention and engagement data — for instance, where the learner is looking within a virtual environment. This type of information can be a valuable predictor of on-the-job performance. Together, VR training data gives organizations much deeper insight into the actions, decisions, and behaviors of their employees and the effectiveness of their training. It also enables the possibility of predictive analytics.

Never before has the promise of VR-based training in the enterprise been more clear than it is today. We can now measure and prove the impact of this groundbreaking approach, setting the stage for unprecedented growth in adoption.

Lear more about how Strivr customers are leveraging VR training data to elevate workforce performance at scale by reading the ebook, Measuring the impact of Strivr’s immersive learning platform.