Many industries are looking for a way to make the industrial training process more efficient, engaging, and cost-effective. Amidst this, virtual reality simulation has emerged as a popular medium for industrial training. Virtual reality helps organizations create lifelike simulations so the workers can practice in a safe and controlled environment to acquire the necessary skills for the real world.
Virtual reality is especially helpful for high-risk industries, such as aviation and healthcare to train professionals without risks and at a lower cost. As the world keeps changing every day, VR is also helping organizations keep the workforce up-to-date with the latest innovations in their respective fields. VR technology is shaping the industrial world in numerous ways, addressing the changing demands of various industries. In this blog, we will delve deeper into how enterprise VR simulations are revolutionizing enterprise and industrial training.
A] How Is VR Training Implementation Revolutionizing Industries?
1. Optimizing The Workforce
Virtual reality provides an engaging training process that helps employees retain what they have learned in their training. This reduces the time for the training process and increases the operational efficiency. Industrial training with VR simulation can be applied to create detailed and realistic structures of the machinery, site, and process which improves the efficiency of the workers as they can practice over and over without driving up the cost.
Immersive training helps to boost information retention and improve the learning process. When employees retain the skills and knowledge they have learned in training, they are able to apply it to their work. Familiarity with the process helps to reduce safety risks in industries such as healthcare, construction, automobile, and manufacturing. This translates to more efficiency, productivity, and profitability for the organizations.
2. Improving Safety Training
Employees can experience risky and emergency scenarios firsthand with the help of virtual reality services. Organizations can teach emergency protocols and risk management with realistic drills for fire safety and other hazardous settings without putting their employees in danger. VR is a great tool for improving the decision-making ability of employees in times of distress.
Employees can become familiar with the machinery and equipment through repeated practice. This can reduce workplace accidents in industries, such as manufacturing and construction. When employees face challenges in the simulation, they can figure out their mistakes and learn from them without any real sense of danger.
3. Soft Skills Development
Soft skills such as communication, leadership, and teamwork are very important for the employee as well as the organization. While some employees might find it very easy and natural to have good communication or leadership skills, it is not the case for everyone. Organizations can leverage VR technology to train employees in more engaging and impactful ways, without real-world consequences.
Organizations can create a safe space for employees to practice and develop their soft skills with VR simulation. Employees can speak and interact with board members, clients, teammates, shareholders, etc., in a simulation without feeling embarrassed or self-conscious.
4. Customization And Adaptability
One of the best things about VR simulation is that you can customize the content to your requirements. The content of the simulation can be tailored to fit the requirements of different industries, job roles, and experience levels. Surgeons can use it to simulate human anatomy for practice, similarly, architects can use VR to find flaws in their designs to fix them before it is too late.
Such versatility and adaptability have allowed VR technology to dominate a wide range of industries. VR can also be tailored to adjust the difficulty levels of a training session to make it either challenging or easier for the employee. Customized VR training can be adjusted to the current day skill requirements granting scalability to the organizations.
5. Measurable Metrics
As opposed to conventional training, VR training offers many metrics that display the efficiency of the training process and optimize it. Managers can track the progress of the employees with detailed performance data and analytics. This helps the organization to identify the areas where the employee needs help and customize the training process.
The data-driven approach helps to track the successful implementation of VR technology and upgrade the training process once the employees have mastered a skill. Metrics that can be tracked using VR technology include productivity, progress, usage, cost, time efficiency, and performance.
B] ROI Of VR Training
When the topic of VR training is brought up in an organization, Two of the most common questions you can expect to hear are “How much does VR training cost?” or “What is the expected ROI for VR training.” To be honest, creating a tailored VR training session can be costly, especially if you do it in-house. It is advisable to partner with an experienced VR Event tech company to cut costs and get expertised solutions.
Despite its initial cost, the expected long-term VR training ROI can be significant. While the up-front investment for traditional training methods might seem lower than VR training, the VR training benefits outweigh the cost. VR simulation reduces the learning curve for the employees, which leads to reduced training time. The immersive and realistic environment helps employees acquire new skills in less time. This increases the productivity of the organization.
VR training also offers the benefit of repetition to the employee. Unlike traditional training, the trainee can practice and learn as many times as they want without worrying about driving up the cost. The repetition leads to better information retention, reduced errors, and improved efficiency at work. VR simulations also offer better scalability. With VR you can eliminate the need to purchase newer equipment or training space when you wish to scale your business.
The combination of better-skilled employees, reduced training time and cost, and provision for smooth scalability makes VR training a superior alternative in terms of ROI.
C] Addressing Challenges And Concerns
As we have seen, VR simulation has many benefits for industrial and enterprise training. However, as the technology is new, there are still many challenges and concerns revolving around the implementation of the technology. Let us have a look at some of the challenges and how we can address them.
- New Technology: While VR technology has been around for over a decade, the technology is constantly being innovated and upgraded. The degree of realism of the video and audio might not be up to the expectation of the employers or employees.
- Upfront Cost: VR technology requires a significant investment, which might not be affordable for small organizations. However, larger organizations that can afford the investment can see a huge return on investment.
- Less Accessible: VR is still not a mainstream technology and it is predominantly used for entertainment and gaming. VR technology for industrial training might not be easily accessible.
- Eye-Strain And Motion Sickness: Due to the surreal realism of VR simulation, many trainees can feel motion sickness and experience headaches. The VR headset being too close to the eye is a prime reason for causing eye strain.
D] Successful VR Training Programs
- Walmart: Walmart is one of the prominent users of VR technology for training programs. Walmart implements VR training for employees to handle rush hour, solve conflicts, and teach new processes and technology. With over a million store associates trained, Walmart has reported approximately a 15% increase in productivity post-training.
- FedEx: FedEx used VR to train newly hired employees on safely loading and unloading packages. FedEx has reported positive results with better information retention and lower employee turnover.
- BP: BP is an oil company that has implemented VR training for emergency drills. It has improved safety training and reduced errors and accidents.
- Porsche: Porsche educates their employees using VR simulation on the components and workings of its cars.
E] Future Trends In VR Training
VR simulation training has been adopted by many organizations and the number is just growing. Industrial VR training was already gaining popularity; however, the pandemic has fast-tracked the process.
As the technology becomes more widely available and popular, we get access to more case studies. VR training case studies show that VR training is more cost-effective and provides better ROI. The cost factor alone is a primary reason why even hesitant organizations would be forced to adopt VR training. As the technology evolves, VR training simulator is predicted to be more affordable with improved features. VR training has the potential to revolutionize the industrial training process, improving productivity and profitability in the process.
Conclusion
Integration of VR for industrial training has improved the training process for both the employees and the organizations. Many organizations are still hesitant about using VR simulation for training; however, the improvements in technology, availability, and cost-efficiency are persuading organizations towards it.
The long-term benefits of VR training such as higher ROI, safety, quick learning, and skills retention are some other factors why adopting VR training is the correct choice for your business. If you too are looking for cutting-edge VR simulator solutions to optimize your training process, contact us today!