Canadian HR Reporter

N E W S 12 www.hrreporter.com Should VR be the next tool in HR's tool kit? While still in its infancy, some employers are finding that virtual reality is not just a tool for gamers but could become a valuable tool for HR professionals for such applications as onboarding and training, finds John Dujay had to cancel its annual summertime outreach event in 2020, usually held for connecting with potential engineering student recruits. This year, with the help of VRdirect, the company held the event virtually. "They set up the website where you would register and then once you're accepted, that would be a 360-VR expe- rience that would allow... potential job applicants to experience the… training facilities, see job profiles and so on. You can basically call this half employer branding, half a recruiting event and that's going to replace physical events in the future, even if [COVID] would allow for physical meetings in the future," says Illenberger. Aside from the potential to span borders and bring workers together from around the globe, VR allows people to gain a true understanding of what is being communicated through "immer- siveness," says Illenberger. "The difference with VR is if you put a headset on the recipient or trainee and have him live through the experience, if it's an onboarding or safety training, it feels like he's actually experiencing connect remotely through the power of VR, whether that's getting together to brainstorm or whiteboard an idea, work on a document, hear updates from your team, hang out and socialize or simply have better conversations that flow more naturally." There has been a tremendous increase in interest in virtual reality technology, especially from people in HR, says Rolf Illenberger, CEO of VRdirect in Munich. "They've gone through not being able to really continue their businesses because the workforce has [had] to remain at home. Obviously, videocon- ferencing could mitigate some of that, but certainly not all, and a lot of them are now thinking about how they can prepare their organizations for situa- tions like this in the future." Using VR in training could also help mitigate certain safety concerns, according to another expert. "Any type of job role in manufac- turing that has a high incident rate... a lot of marine jobs and logging jobs and oil and energy, nuclear reactors, things like that where there's a high element of risk involved — using a virtual training environment completely eliminates risk altogether," says Lorne Fade, COO and cofounder of VR Vision in Toronto. Immersive experience Some companies have already employed VR to replace certain HR functions during the COVID lockdown, says Illenberger. For example, Porsche, the automaker based in Stuttgart, Germany, that; the way he actually remembers that situation is way different than in any other kind of format. That's the big advantage of VR — and then if you apply this to HRM, you obviously have fairly quickly positive ROIs on these kinds of projects." It's this functionality and immersive experience that allowed Porsche to provide virtual tours of the head office and another German facility. "The feedback that the people gave is that 'It's just a five-, six-, seven-minute thing, but you will actually stand in a facility [and] someone, the head of the Leipzig facility, will explain the facility. And the feeling after the seven minutes is: 'I know this campus, although I haven't been there before,'" says Illenberger. A lot of employers using the tech- nology are seeing improvements in overall learning, says Fade. "After using VR, for example, they're retaining infor- mation from their job up to around 75 per cent better." It's the full-mind experience that could make VR an effective tool one day, he says. "The best feature is that you're distraction-free; when you're inside of a headset, you can't be looking at messages on your phone or other notifications online." Lorne Fade, VR Vision ONE of the biggest challenges faced by organizations during COVID has been trying to recreate the in-office experience as many workers remain dispersed and remote. While virtual reality (VR) technology has been used for some time to help students learn such skills as performing a medical procedure or to educate employees on new machines that are potentially dangerous and difficult to learn, HR departments are taking another look at this technology as poten- tially one more tool in their own virtual tool kit. This interest in VR was further stoked in August when Facebook launched its own VR application, Horizon Workrooms, to "improve your team's ability to collaborate, communicate and THE VR MARKETPLACE 52.4% Percentage growth of global shipments of headsets 28.6 million Projected number of headsets sold by 2025 95% Percentage of organizations wanting to increase spending on immersive technology for collaborations and training Sources: IDC, Perkins Coie and XR Association

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