Through XR, employers can simulate real-life scenarios for hard and soft skills, in a safe environment, says expert
As companies continue to seek innovative ways to boost employee engagement and productivity, extended reality (XR) technology is emerging as a pivotal tool in reshaping employee training programs, notes one expert.
XR is an umbrella term encapsulating Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), and everything in between. People can access it through XR headphones.
This was quite useful in recreating the office environment for teams who were dispersed but were looking to continue using the Agile project management method during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Adrian Moise, CEO and founder, Aequilibrium.
“You can build this environment that can reproduce your office environment. Or it can be like, ‘Okay, let's meet in this space’, or ‘Let's meet on this lake or the mountainside and bring everybody in and reproduce the Agile ceremony in VR’.”
How should employers use XR technology?
This same technology can be used for employee training, he says. He shares a story told to him by a head nurse involved in a VR training program for a province on the East Coast of Canada where they are trying to train nurses in their own communities instead of having them leave to go to these university schools and hospitals.
“To complement their traditional learning, they receive these headsets so they can actually practice at home, so they can go and do full-time work in the community, without leaving their cities and communities,” he says.
“And when they have some spare time, they can put the headphones on.”
With the technology, nurses can learn how to insert a catheter or how to draw blood from a patient.
“You also can learn bedside manners, and you can also get to simulate some scenarios in which critical thinking is required,” says Moise.
TD’s VR training program is popular with employees, according to a previous report.
Aside from XR allowing for workers to train the hard skills for their jobs, it can also help them learn soft skills, says Moise. He cites a bank scenario as an example. Using the technology, employers can recreate a scenario where an irritated customer calls in and the employee has to diffuse the situation, he says.
“The first aspect is ‘How do you deal with a customer that is already frustrated about the experience, who feels entitled to something and that's not happening, or the system is not performing as expected?’”
With this, employees can learn how to diffuse the situation and solve the problem that the customer is facing, he says.
Real-life scenarios with XR training
One of the major advantages of XR, according to Moise, is its ability to simulate real-life scenarios in a safe and adaptable setting.
“Imagine we're doing training for financial institutions, on how to deal with an active shooter situation. Imagine how you do this training in real life. You bring somebody with a gun, and then the alarm is blaring. And what if the gun discharges? What if somebody gets injured in the process where somebody gets really scared? You also need to bring everybody on site. You need to have police and maybe even medical staff on standby for these training sessions just to make sure everything is okay,” says Moise.
“Instead, you can do this from the comfort of your home in a similar, very immersive environment, where you know nobody will be injured. And if you don’t complete this training… you can just terminate the simulations at any point, and then restart it when you're ready to do that again. So it reduces both time and cost.”
Virtual reality training can save lives, according to a previous report.
Moise advises that employers think strategically about what the role of technology – such as XR and artificial intelligence (AI) – can be to solve problems they're facing.
“Not only is the training done more cost effectively, but the employees are more engaged. And then one thing that leads to is employee retention. They become advocates for your team.”
Overall, 71% of workers would like to update their skills more often, and 80% believe employers should invest more to provide upskilling and reskilling opportunities for workers, reports TalentLMS.