Skilled employees are the backbone of any company, and keeping them skilled and up-to-date is important to keep up with today’s fast-moving business world. However, effective training can become a challenge. Traditional training methods have limitations and are now outdated, leading to low retention and minimal real-world impact.
So, what is immersive learning? It is the alternative to traditional training and uses cutting-edge technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create dynamic and interesting experiences. This approach boosts engagement and promises better retention.
What Is Immersive Learning?
Various training methods can be implemented, but nowadays, technology has taken over with immersive learning. Immersive learning uses AR and VR technology and helps in employee training in a more realistic and interactive environment. Traditional learning methods can only include lectures, manuals, or online modules, but immersive learning helps practice skills and improves decision-making. It also maintains a quick feedback system, which helps improve employee performance.
Immersive learning uses AR and VR for employee training, which makes learning interesting, and it is used for understanding real-world settings. Through immersive learning, employees better understand and improve their problem-solving and decision-making skills, which are necessary for the real world.
Benefits of Immersive Learning in Corporate Training
Immersive learning has many advantages that corporations cannot ignore, so they use AI technologies for corporate training and are increasingly adopting immersive learning over traditional training.
Enhanced Engagement and Retention
Traditional learning methods are often monotonous, and employees quickly lose attention in the same continuous tone, but immersive learning makes the learning experience easier and more engaging. Employees will most likely remember what they have learned because they are practicing it. Immersive learning can increase the retention rate by 75% compared to traditional training methods.
Real-World Experience in a Safe Environment
Immersive learning helps employees learn skills by practicing in real-life scenarios, such as using machines and handling emergencies. Employees can even talk to customers in a virtual setting without any risk. This helps them better understand every element and reduce mistakes by gaining confidence for the job.
Cost-Effective and Scalable Training
Immersive learning training is pretty cost-friendly and affordable compared to traditional learning methods because it requires many things, like physical resources, travel, and instructor-led sessions. Although it might seem expensive in the beginning, it’s a one-time investment, and its long-lasting use saves a lot of traditional training costs.
Improved Soft Skills and Decision-Making
Many AI programs can improve employees’ soft skills. Immersive learning can improve employees’ communication and leadership skills. Through simulated scenarios, employees can practice leadership and interact with others. These AI-driven technologies also give feedback, which further helps employees with their decision-making abilities and emotional intelligence.
Personalized Learning Paths
Immersive learning gives employees a personalized setting to learn and customize their learning experience. These platforms often use AI to track employee progress. Employees can learn and grow at their own pace without stressing about human instructors being strict, and they can get recommendations based on their performance from AI.
Increased Accessibility and Inclusivity
Immersive learning has many features that make it accessible to employees with different learning styles and abilities. Features like audio descriptions and voice commands can help employees in training, especially for those who are more comfortable speaking than clicking.
How Leading Companies Use Immersive Learning
Leading companies are using immersive learning to improve employee training in exciting new ways. Here’s a closer look at how some major players are doing it:
Walmart:
Walmart uses virtual reality (VR) to help employees practice handling busy times, especially during holidays. This allows them to make better decisions and manage stress in a realistic, virtual setting.
Boeing:
It uses augmented reality (AR) for training technicians. Through AR, they can see complex parts of aircraft in 3D. Through this, the new employees can understand how things fit together and will make fewer mistakes.
Accenture:
Accenture uses VR to provide a virtual experience of the company’s culture, values, and real-world business situations while onboarding new employees. This helps the new employees better understand their roles and also builds confidence.
UPS:
UPS has creatively used VR to simulate tough driving conditions so that new drivers can practice navigating tough weather, traffic, and hazards with fewer risks.
Several other organizations are using immersive learning to handle difficult situations, teach warehouse workers to operate machinery safely, help chefs practice new recipes in a virtual kitchen, prepare managers to handle challenging workplace scenarios, and for many other purposes.
Challenges of Implementing Immersive Learning
Despite several advantages, implementing immersive learning can be challenging. This game-changing technique is expensive; it requires a high investment to set up VR/AR infrastructure. With time and the advancement of technology, this cost will decrease, but the initial investment is still a significant barrier for many companies, especially startups and budget-restrained companies.
The next big challenge is that not everyone is tech-savvy. Companies should train their employees to make them comfortable navigating immersive tools. Creating the content to fill those VR/AR headsets is another challenge—it’s not as simple as slapping a video together. Developing high-quality, engaging training modules requires time, expertise, and substantial resources. And even when all the tech and content are in place, there’s the task of integration.
Conclusion
Immersive learning is rapidly changing the way companies approach employee training. When you train through VR, AR, and AI, the results are more effective and engaging, and they also have a better retention rate. However, the shift to immersive learning has its own set of challenges, like initial high costs and a need for tech training. You can go for immersive learning if you are focused on the long-term benefits. Even with high costs, it will improve employee performance and reduce high-scale human training expenses.
