Tag: vr for hr

9 Productive Organizations Using Virtual Reality in Human Resources

By Espresso Insight on July 29, 2019October 11, 2020

In this post, we cover 9 different companies that are using virtual reality for human resources. We’ll discuss the benefits these companies have realized by implementing VR in HR and other parts of the enterprise, which include:

– reduce travel expenses
– reduce costs
– save time
– enable employee flexibility
– enhance productivity
– increase efficiency, and more.

We hope this post helps you decide if VR is right for your business.

Examples of Enterprise VR for HR:

This post will cover a few companies that have implemented virtual reality into their current processes and systems.

1. Deutsche Bahn

German Railway company Deutsche Bahn employed a large population of employees set to retire within a few years. The company was hiring aggressively, and needed a way to train all these new employees. As a railway company, equipment and machinery is heavy and expensive – there isn’t an easy way to bring it into the classroom. The company built 360-degree VR experiences with the help of a few 3rd party startups. “This lets technicians practice how to assemble switch locks and troubleshoot problems with switches”, stated the Deutsche Bahn website. The company also mentions that an augmented-reality system can be used to guide even their more experienced employees through complex repair processes to speed up procedures. In addition to training, the company sets up VR headsets at job fairs, trips, and interviews. This enables recruiters to present immersive experiences to attract prospective candidates.

2. Walmart

Walmart, which is the nation’s largest private employer, has installed Oculus Go headsets into their 4,600 U.S. stores. VR helps understand how an employee accomplishes a task in a virtual setting. Managers are able to gain insight into employee skills and understand how employees handle everyday scenarios, which include managing sections of the store or preparing for busy season. This helps determine who gets raises and promoted to management roles. Walmart’s goal is to reduce turnover as well as limit decision bias in hiring to increase diversity. STRIVR, company based in silicon valley, builds the VR simulations.

3. The British Army

VR helps soldiers of the British Army familiarize themselves with aspects of combat before going through actual training. VR is used for vehicle, flight, and battlefield simulation, medic training, and even a virtual boot camp. Leveraging VR allows the British Army to save money. VR is a cheaper way to train soldiers on certain processes before doing them in real life. Visualizing and going through proper procedures and techniques in a virtual environment minimizes the use of costly resources such as fuel and supplies. Avatars within the simulation are designed to display true facial features such that soldiers can recognize each other, allowing soldiers to function as a team. Data capture and analysis allow soldiers to review and improve their performance. The virtual training is developed by Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BiSim).

4. Kentucky Fried Chicken

KFC is using the technology to teach employees how to cook fried chicken. The company did so by partnering with Oculus, to build an escape-room themed game where employees learn how to cook chicken the hard way. Although the game has received mixed reviews, the description states that “this was the clearest way to communicate exactly what is expected when it comes to making his fried chicken.” Say what you will about the overlap of VR technology and cooking chicken – one thing is for sure – there are few better ways to satisfy your hunger than stopping by KFC.

5. Lowe’s Home Improvement

Lowe’s developed a VR application at their Lowe’s Innovation Labs to make home improvement projects simple and seamless for the customer. The virtual experience allowed customers to walk through and learn how to accomplish DIY projects, such as tiling a shower. According to Lowe’s, going through such a project in virtual reality helped people reach memory performance levels comparable to someone with more experience. It can be hypothesized that VR has a measurable impact on humans ability to learn. By giving inexperienced customers the confidence to take on a DIY project, Lowe’s stands to sell more products and increase revenue.

6. Hilton Worldwide

Hilton is using VR for virtual employee training. Hilton’s goal was to improve communication between customers and staff. To do so, they developed VR system that replicates real-life customer reactions to different scenarios. This helped employees develop the interpersonal skills needed to foster positive customer interactions. Beyond customer interaction, Hilton also piloted a conflict resolution program to help employees become more skilled at service recovery. One of the challenges of rolling out the service, it seems, is localization. Since Hilton has properties across the world, the VR must be catered to many different languages.

7. Samsung

Samsung needed to make training at their production more efficient and less costly. The employee experience during training includes a headset as well as a handheld controller that mimics a tool that allows the employee to work through the mock manufacturing processes. For Samsung, the bonus is that they actually make the hardware: phones to be viewed on VR headsets.

8. Volkswagon

VW uses the HTC Vive virtual reality system to assist with train 10,000 employees in the production and logistics teams in order to increase productivity and efficiency. With VR training, employees can learn at their own pace, and the company avoids costly travel expenses. VR is also scalable. So far, the company’s VR lessons include vehicle assembly, new team member training, and customer service.
In addition to employee training, VW uses VR technology for prototyping. The product team is able to construct virtual car parts that can be built in real life after being perfected. Building virtual prototypes has a few advantages over physical ones – often, virtual is faster, cheaper, and easier to tweak. It also allows designers to communicate and share ideas with engineering and others on the development team.

9. NBC

NBC broadcasted a number of hours of the Rio Summer Olympics as well as the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in VR. The events included opening and closing ceremonies, men’s basketball, gymnastics, track and field, beach volleyball, diving, boxing, alpine skiing, curling, snowboarding, skeleton, figure skating, short track, ski jumping, ice hockey, big air, and fencing. The NBC team has partnered with Intel and Samsung to broadcast these past events.

We hope you now have a general idea about the ways that a number of large, recognizable companies are investing in virtual reality technology specifically for human resources. All of these companies are realizing a positive impact in doing so. Is your team looking to implement VR or other emerging systems in your organization? The team at AbstractRealization.com would love to hear about it – let us know, here.

Posted in: emerging technology, virtual reality, vr, vr for business, vr for hr

business computing

Is Virtual Reality the Future of Human Resources?

By Espresso Insight on July 10, 2019October 11, 2020

Virtual Reality is an umbrella term that comes in many forms: augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, and extended reality. Each form of VR provides the user with a sense of immersion at varying degrees. When you factor in the possibility of sensory input beyond just visual and auditory, that VR continuum of possibility extends even further.

While the idea of experiencing a virtual world may sound like science fiction, virtual reality experiences in 2019 are very much available at the consumer level.

What About Enterprise VR?

Arguably, the best place to experience state of the art Virtual Reality is an industry in which most HR practitioners wouldn’t expect to find themselves: video games. In terms of VR tech, video game companies are like ultra-marathon runners in a 5K race.

Gaming devices such as Oculus, HTC Vive, or Playstation possess capabilities that dramatically outpace a layperson’s expectations. These VR gaming systems are so good that the technology is now being adopted outside of the game industry for which it was originally designed.

Human resources is just one of those places where VR is being adopted.

Although our focus is the enterprise application of VR for HR, I do recommend HR practitioners at least look into how video games have thrived with VR technology. Doing so will help understand a bit more about what to expect with VR for HR as technology improves.

Passionate human resource practitioners understand that at its core, HR is about a company’s most critical asset: people.

This post focuses on employee adoption of technology. An understanding of how employees adopt technology will help us understand how an enterprise VR implementation might go over inside an actual organization.

First, Put Yourself inside Your Employee’s Cube:

To begin, picture an office-style workplace environment. Within a cubicle or office, workers sit in ergonomic adjustable chairs. Often, desks move up or down, offering “standing desk” capability.

These employees do most of their work on a laptop computer. The laptop’s display is often extended to two or more additional monitors. Many employees wear expensive noise-cancelling headphones.

With LCD screens surrounding the field of vision and headphones drowning out distractions, the employee’s sensibility to the outside world is almost removed. They see and hear little outside of digital notifications. Lounging in an environment of comfort and focused knowledge work, the modern workplace has already become somewhat of a virtual world.

But let’s hope our employees don’t get too immersed in their cubicles, its important get move around the office. Innovations in interior design and office furniture give employees unique zones to conduct their business that didn’t exist years ago. Soundproof pods, for instance, allow the employees to make phone calls free of colleague earshot.

Employees Welcome Tech With Open Arms

According to bls.gov, the average full time M-F worker spends about 8.5 hours working per day. A 40+ hour work week means employees spend close to more time in the office during waking hours than they do at home.

Its no secret that newer technology tends toward more and more of an immersive experience. More immersive tech means we are more tuned-in to do our jobs; by-and-large, employees love it.

Say what you will about the addictive nature of internet access via cell phones and computers, as technology becomes available to employees in the workplace, you can be confident that it will be greeted with open arms. Employees adopt workplace technology at an alarmingly fast pace.

Curved monitors are now quite common in some offices; where there is an option, desks that lack curved monitors are abandoned. After experiencing newer and better technology, the former feels obsolete. Humans crave the new, the novel, and the innovative. Modern workers won’t stand to revert to a more elementary desktop display. This fact of human nature is exemplified nowhere stronger than in the location where we make our livelihoods: the workplace.

We can expect the office environment to become more immersive. Virtual reality – in whatever form you can imagine – will play no small role in this trend.

Posted in: hrtech, hrtechnologist, human resources, virtual reality, vr, vr for hr, vr in human resources