Innovation is a major focus in the 21st century, especially when it comes to digital, virtual and immersive technologies. Three years ago, companies had to face a new economic climate and the emergence of new challenges. These organizations and educational institutions have since adapted and found in immersive technologies a solution to meet the new challenges.
There’s no need to explain further: the health crisis was the trigger. How can we continue to support activity and the development of skills remotely? How can we recreate the reality of hands-on experience and offer tools for collaboration, work and training? This is where immersive technologies (VR/AR/XR) have proven their usefulness and have now become a part of daily life for many employees. And this craze continues today.
Forrester Consulting’s study “The New Way Of Working Is Immersive”, commissioned by Unity, assesses how the pandemic transformed interactions between clients and employees in a more digital world. Through their survey of 309 decision-makers, they sought to understand the role that immersive technologies have played in reviving operations restricted during the pandemic.
NEW WORK DYNAMICS
Initially, between 2019 and 2021, the health crisis accelerated the adoption of immersive technologies by 54% and their implementation by 34%. Reluctance turned into enthusiasm when decision-makers were faced with their many benefits. Indeed, immersive technologies allow an implementation of situations that are difficult or even impossible to carry out remotely. This was a significant relief for multiple companies because the onboarding, the training and the practice could be perpetuated without physical restrictions.
Today, the study predicts a total integration of immersive technologies in the working environment. According to Forrester, the main benefits that drive decision-makers to go virtual are to offer immersive training to their employees (51%), to create interactive 3D simulations (50%) and to enable remote collaboration (47%).
RETHINKING CLASSROOM TRAINING AND OFFERING NEW DIGITAL SOLUTIONS: AWARENESS
Over the next 12 to 24 months, the use of virtual reality in companies will rise to 68% compared to pre-pandemic years. According to decision-makers, over the next three years, immersive technology will become a significant comparative advantage and demand for metaverse experiences will increase. Adaptable, easily distributed and effective, immersive technologies currently offer many opportunities and a remarkable potential.
PwC shows that VR learners are 250% more confident about putting their training to good use, 40% more than face-to-face learners and 35% more than e-learners. VR learners are four times more focused than e-learners and finish four times faster than face-to-face learners, with an emotional connection 3.75 times higher than face-to-face learners, and 2.3 times higher than e-learners. Furthermore, VR training has economic benefits of scale while reducing the barriers of physical methods through in-person replication.
The observation is the same for all companies that have deployed immersive solutions during the crisis: VR continues to prove its worth. Training teams and trainers in the field are much more inclined to use virtual alternatives as a complement to already established training. Resistance to change is reduced, the perception of digital has evolved and the aim is not to replace but to reinforce, improve and make the existing methods more flexible. In fact, 85% of the participants in the study expressed that they had witnessed an improvement in production training and 91% in skills integration and training.
THEY USED UPTALE TO DIGITALISE TRAINING:
Schneider Electric created an immersive and interactive training course to prepare for the post-lockdown launch of plants during the health crisis. The training allows learners to be fully immersed in the site and interact with their environment. Social distancing and safety measures were put into practice such as good vs. bad reactions, risk identification, and many others.
Chloe created an onboarding experience to create a sense of belonging to maison Chloe for office employees not working in headquarters. “It’s a fairly strong integration program, consisting of boutique visits, a day dedicated to all the company’s departments and a presentation of the more administrative and HR processes“, Digital Solutions, Sophie Surteauville. Launched in the six countries where the company is deployed, employees around the world can benefit from this virtual experience.
Alstom created an experience to be carried out prior to the safety briefings in the classroom. The module enabled the perpetuation of training and visits to their production site during the health crisis, either on VR headsets or on the internal platform. With more than 1,700 training sessions since 2020, the group was able to communicate its values of inclusion and integration in a fun and participatory way, even in an uncertain and restrictive context.
Schneider Electric, Alstom, Air Liquide, Delfingen, Solvay and many others have adopted the Uptale immersive training solution. Join the VR movement and improve your results with Uptale!
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