The Tech Savvy Future of Employee Training and Onboarding in Virtual Reality

VR onboarding has changed the way companies welcome new employees

Employee onboarding has come a long way in the last few years. In fact, VR has changed the way we do business, particularly in the training process.

VR has now become the preferred method for both training and helping new employees become acclimated in their new roles. While there’s definitely no shortage of ways to onboard new recruits in person, having long, drawn-out lectures about company policies are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

So, when it comes to deciding if VR is better than IRL for employee training, the final decision comes down to understanding the pros, possible cons and how it differs from in-person onboarding.

Is VR Training better than IRL?

Every business is different, so you first need to consider what VR can do to enhance the onboarding and training process. In addition to creating a welcoming environment, you can also use it to do meet and greets and office tours.

This can create a more relaxed atmosphere for new recruits who are just learning the ropes. It can also help foster a feeling of community, which is a major selling point for new employees.

VR also helps employers learn more about new employees by allowing them to participate in activities that highlight their strengths and weaknesses. That way, upskilling and reskilling programs can be tailored to focus on areas that need improvement.

Benefits of VR Training

Aside from making onboarding a more pleasurable experience, VR can also help to improve an employee’s earliest days at a new job. Since the first few days are when a new employee forms their first impression, it’s important to make the onboarding process as streamlined as possible.

In addition, VR also offers a variety of other benefits, which include:

Makes Onboarding Fun

Most people automatically associate virtual reality with fun. So, when it comes to using it for onboarding and training, it can make learning material feel less tedious and repetitive. Instead, it creates a place where employees feel more relaxed and communicate freely.

Highlight Your Company’s Strengths

When you use VR for onboarding, it sends a positive message to new employees. They feel like they chose the right company to work for, specifically based on the fact that you deviated from the norm when it comes to onboarding. It also shows them that their future with the company can be far more than a gray cubicle with no social interaction.

Enhanced Training Options

It’s a proven fact that people retain more information and learn more when they’re having fun. And since there’s no pressure, they’re also more likely to want to learn more often and for longer intervals.

That said, companies that choose to use VR for onboarding, in addition to other training sequences, usually reap the rewards of higher levels of ROI and also higher levels of productivity overall.

VR Allows to Create Personalized Experiences

As important as onboarding is, it can still feel like a tedious, never-ending task. When you use VR, you can create personalized experiences that every employee will remember.

For example, instead of sitting back in that gray cubicle, you could hold your onboarding sessions sitting under a virtual palm tree or on a snowy mountain top. In addition, new employees could learn about the company’s history by actually going back in time on a virtual tour

How to Transform the Onboarding Process with VR

If you’ve been thinking about implementing VR into your onboarding processes, here below are three ways to make the transition easier.

Gamification

Virtual reality takes the gamification onboarding process a step above flashy badges and scoring points. With interaction gamification, you can showcase your organization and make long-winded onboarding processes more personalized and more engaging.

For instance, if you could take a boring PowerPoint presentation about your company’s policies and turn it into a fun quiz show, would you do it? Employees would be more engaged and eager to participate, even when it’s about a not-so-interesting topic.

Team Building

One of the top reasons new hires resign or quit within the first six months of hire is due to miscommunication between themselves and the company. It’s not uncommon for new employees to feel like an outsider and not like part of the team.

What’s worse is that in-person team-building activities usually don’t work out the way you would like. Thankfully, this is where VR can help. With increased interaction between employees and possibly management, it’s easier than ever before to bridge the gap and let new employees have an inside look into the company culture.

Functional Training

Jobs that are high stress, require using complicated machinery or are considered dangerous would benefit from virtual training modules. For example, health care professionals can use VR to create simulated situations to train new interns, nurses and surgeons.

But virtual reality implementation isn’t only for these industries. VR can also help when you’re onboarding your marketing, sales and customer service teams.

Roadblocks to Using VR for Training

Companies that choose to use VR as part of the onboarding process could impress candidates who want to work for tech-savvy organizations. However, even with all the benefits of using VR, there is a downside as well. Startups with a small budget might not have the capital to implement VR for onboarding purposes.

In addition, there’s always a risk of accessibility issues as well. With that said, the future of employee training needs to focus on what’s best for the employee as well as the company.