The Wall Street Journal praises ArborXR customers UPS, Volvo and Walmart for finding a use case for virtual reality training at work.
While the consumer industry has yet to achieve widespread adoption of VR, there is a “quiet adoption” in companies all over the world that have embraced immersive technology and are seeing incredible early results.
The Wall Street Journal recently covered enterprise XR programs at leading global companies using ArborXR to deploy their initiatives. Companies like UPS, Volvo, and Walmart are tapping into immersive technology for employee training. With VR, employees can now experience workforce training in brand new ways using a range of focuses from hardware maintenance to leadership and empathy.
Many companies are beginning to adopt VR in learning and development, remote assistance, collaboration and design, and more. Some companies, like UPS and Walmart, have taken a slow but deliberate approach. At the scale of those organizations, it is important to ensure everything is tested, piloted, and secure throughout the process.
“It’s an interesting, but slower-than-expected journey. But for training — I think VR will always be a good way to use it.”
Johan Hellqvist, Head of Mobile and XR/3D at Volvo Group
So, how does employee training work in VR?
Virtual Reality At Work With Volvo
Volvo is using VR to train employees in mechanical vehicle maintenance to replicate situations that could be dangerous. Volvo employee training includes actions like replacing the battery on an electric truck.
When Volvo launched the first heavy-duty electric truck, it needed a way to safely service trucks on high voltage. Volvo valued delivering the best quality service when commissioning and decommissioning trucks and doing it safely. That’s where VR helps. With VR, Volvo could simulate dangerous conditions to teach technicians the correct safety practices and standing operating procedures with no risk. Needing to safely train over 20,000 technicians led Volvo to innovate, develop, and implement virtual reality training for work.
“Most of the technicians—middle-aged or older—are not very digital but are very technical. They have a curious mindset and are willing to try this.”
Johan Cruse, Tools and Methods Manager for Retail Learning Development at Volvo Trucks
Virtual Reality At Work With UPS
Leading the logistics industry, UPS created an Immersive Technology division in 2019 and has stayed committed to using innovative strategies for its operations.
Since integrating virtual reality into their operations, UPS has seen a 75% reduction in training time, decreasing from 8 hours of traditional mentor-led training to just 2 hours. And with that shorter duration, the company has still seen no loss in training effectiveness.
UPS also offers “pre-trip” training in VR, walking trainees through a checklist of tasks they need to complete before hitting the road. UPS is working to scale beyond drivers to other roles in the business, like package operators at logistics hubs.
UPS uses VR to train drivers in areas such as stacking packages or even handling certain situations in the field, such as a dog attack. UPS consistently uses immersive technology to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve its employee experience.
Virtual Reality At Work With Walmart
Walmart has long been a pioneer in virtual reality for employee training. The retail giant has also tapped into VR corporate training to supplement its “people-first” approach. Across more than45 activity-based VR modules, Walmart has seen a 10-15% improvement in test scores for employees.
Walmart uses VR to train its store associates in scenarios like how to interact with a frustrated customer or how to deliver groceries “in-home” or curbside according to their defined SOP. Using VR to refine associate training, the company can see clear data about which associates made right or wrong choices during the scenario.
“Doing this training in VR also gives the company more data on how associates are performing, compared with traditional methods.”
Jen Buchanan, Vice President of Walmart Academy
To scale its VR training program, Walmart had to overcome challenges like limited content, manual processes, and staging difficult-to-achieve or difficult-to-replicate situations.
It now uses an open ecosystem supported by ArborXR to power the large fleet of headsets needed to train thousands of employees. Because of this, Walmart has access and flexibility to use new tools and training content with any hardware it needs.
As an early adopter of VR training, Walmart has trained more than 1 million employees through VR.
Getting Started with Virtual Reality at Work
Launching and scaling an VR program at work is a monumental challenge for UPS, Volvo, Walmart, and companies like these. However, it is key in effectively training millions of employees across the globe. XR is especially useful if it’s used for training that is “dangerous, impossible, counterproductive, or expensive in real life,” says Jeremy Bailenson, Head of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab.
If you are developing XR training at an enterprise level, it is important to have the right tools, solutions, partners, and the best device management platform (MDM) for XR.
Consider what ArborXR customers have to say about finding the perfect partner to scale and manage large deployments. With tools and resources designed for enterprise, companies like UPS, Volvo, Walmart, and more are using ArborXR to launch and scale enterprise XR programs.
“As we scale XR training across the enterprise, ArborXR stands out as the best enterprise MDM solution on the market.”
Mohsen Khurasany, Senior Manager, XR Content Innovation at Walmart
ArborXR offers enterprise device management, remote app distribution, remote casting, custom home environments, kiosk mode, and more. Our platform gives you and your team control for a seamless VR experience that you can manage remotely.
ArborXR is dedicated to the success of every XR program at every stage. We provide wraparound support and visibility into our product updates and roadmap. We connect you with the best XR solution experts, providers, and developers to ensure your XR program is successful and proves ROI.
Whether it’s finding the right content, hardware manufacturing, and accessories, or finding provisioning and procurement partners—we’re here to help you start and scale VR.
If you’re considering a move to VR and XR training, we can help you manage your devices and build your program securely and efficiently. We offer a 30-day free trial to get you started so you can be sure you have every question answered.
Join 50+ Fortune 500 companies and thousands of organizations and sign up for ArborXR today.
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