Why Choosing a VR Training Center Matters for Your Organization

Modern technology is revolutionizing the corporate training and development landscape. Through innovative measures like immersive 360° VR training, companies can leverage the inherent advantages of these technologies to improve (re)training efforts and multi-skill development in their organizations.

However, the VR training selection process shouldn’t ever be conducted without significant thought, given the impact training centers and their solutions can have on your organization. To name just a few benefits of VR training, they include:

• Training Speed & Quality:Look for centers with proven track records that can bring employees up to speed quickly. Immersive VR training should be significantly more effective than traditional methods, so providers must demonstrate their value..
• Fitness for Purpose: Different industries require specific training modules. A center with experience in providing VR training for financial institutions may not meet the needs of emergency services or manufacturing.
• Scalability: Ensure the training center has scalable technology that can be implemented company-wide.
• Level of Support: Robust customer service is essential for troubleshooting and ensuring smooth operation when problems arise.
• Reporting & Analytics: The software should include features for measuring ROI, monitoring performance, and generating customized reports for stakeholders.

VR Training Selection: What You Need to Know

Keeping all of the above aspects in mind, this is what you should consider when choosing a VR training center to ensure it’s a good match:

Analyze Your Objectives

Measuring the ROI of anything is impossible unless you clearly define some objectives prior to committing to the investment. Ask yourself some of the following questions:

• Why is this training important for the organization?
• How many people need to receive this training within the next 6 months? How many will need it within the next 5 years?
• What qualifications should be developed as part of this training?
• What are the measurable outcomes that we can expect?

Establishing a roadmap like this will help guide your decision-making process and ultimately make sure the chosen company’s VR solutions align with your organization’s goals.

Customization Options

As mentioned, the varying nature of different industries dictates what the VR training has to help accomplish. Every organization has unique training needs, and the ability to tailor the content specifically to them allows your workforce to get the most out of the training, rather than relying on generic modules they don’t find too applicable in the real world. Therefore, ask about the extent to which scenarios can be modified and/or whether you’ll have the possibility of creating bespoke modules to suit your requirements.

User Experience and Accessibility

An unworkable interface can hinder training from the start and impede achieving desired learning outcomes. Ensure the company’s testimonials verify that their interfaces are intuitive and user-friendly, and accessible to those with disabilities..

Pilot Program Availability

Before committing all-in, check for the availability of a pilot program. This will allow you to test the waters and assess if the technology truly has the potential to let your organization’s training efforts flourish and bring in significant returns.

The Takeaway

Choosing a VR training center is a critical first step in taking any organization’s learning & development efforts to the next level. Because of this, it’s absolutely imperative that you know what you’re getting into beforehand so as to avoid partnering with a company whose solutions aren’t sufficiently well aligned with your organization.

The Role of XR in Polish Finance

Financial institutions face ongoing pressures from digitalization, forcing them to enhance service efficiency. This, of course, has to happen without sacrificing compliance with rigorous regulations that remain unflinching. 

Unsurprisingly, this has created a niche for innovative training methods that can help companies in the financial sector address these challenges. Thanks to technological advancements and human ingenuity, immersive 360° VR solutions are becoming more popular and widely used to improve training efforts across various sectors.

Mazerspace: Equipping Financial Institutions with VR Training Options

Mazer has proudly answered the call from one of Poland’s largest financial institutions, PKO Bank Polski, to help the bank explore the possibilities of metaverse spaces for both internal training and customer interactions. Using state-of-the-art Mazer technology, we’ve constructed virtual training centers to simulate real-world financial scenarios such as complex customer service interactions, loan processing, or cybersecurity drills. This innovation has empowered the bank to:

• Equip employees with essential new skills,
• Assess their performance in challenging, unexpected situations,
• Pinpoint vulnerabilities in cybersecurity practices, where employees may exhibit lapses in diligence

However, establishing a metaverse presence has not just created an opportunity for PKO Bank Polski to utilize VR for upskilling their employees. Facilitating the training and onboarding of new hires has also become more efficient due to the superiority of immersive VR training over traditional methods. We cover its benefits in detail in the next section.

Why Financial Institutions Turn to VR Training

Virtual Reality (VR) and the benefits of VR training are many, including:

• Learning in a risk-free environment:  Mistakes can be costly in the financial sector, especially when dealing with high-value transactions, regulatory compliance, or working directly on customer accounts. VR allows employees to learn and make mistakes in a safe environment without consequences. This simultaneously reduces the learning curve while equipping them with better knowledge to handle such situations in the real world later on.
• Hands-on training for complex tasks: Customer service is an inseparable part of the banking industry. Sometimes, clients come in with extremely convoluted scenarios that no pen-and-paper training session could ever prepare CS representatives for adequately. Through immersive VR, employees can practice their soft skills in such scenarios and learn to deal with difficult clients.
• Improved learning retention:  Immersive learning environments enhance the trainee’s knowledge retention much better compared to the usual solutions like PowerPoint presentations, lectures, or reading process documentation.
• Cost-effectiveness and scalability: Traditional training methods in the financial sector are often costly and time-consuming. VR training provides a cost-effective alternative, as the technology can be scaled across different departments and locations globally. In addition, once the modules have been developed, they can be used repeatedly without the need for further resources.

The Takeaway

As a critical sector standing at the crux of private and public interest, virtual training in the financial sector plays a pivotal role in preparing employees to handle increasingly complex challenges. The collaboration between Mazer and PKO Bank Polski exemplifies how extended reality technologies can revolutionize training in critical areas like cybersecurity or compliance.

If you’re ready to take your financial institution’s training efforts to the next level, Mazer can help you harness the power of extended reality. Get in touch today to learn how we can bring magic to your business and implement innovative VR training solutions in your organization.

Benefits of VR Upskilling

As businesses evolve hand-in-hand with new technological advancements, upskilling and reskilling the workforce becomes both a pressing issue and a critical strategy needed to remain competitive. The problem lies in finding the right cost-effective training solutions to allow professionals to develop T-shaped skill sets as quickly as possible in real-world scenarios without undertaking unnecessary risks.

VR upskilling can form a comprehensive answer to these problems. As an innovative form of learning, the benefits of VR training are immense and should not be understated:

• Cost reduction: Implementing comprehensive training for employees to develop crucial skills requires hands-on practice. In sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, or aviation, creating such scenarios is either too costly or too risky, and VR upskilling takes care of both.
• Scalability: Acquiring the technology for VR training once allows organizations to scale their efforts across different locations and departments, enabling companies to maintain standardized practices and procedures across regions​.
• Better knowledge retention: Immersive learning environments are undoubtedly more effective in what they’re designed to do than standard training methods. In VR, earners can interact directly with their surroundings and receive instant feedback, which makes it superior to listening to presentations or rifling through pages of technical documents.

Reskilling through Virtual Training

As per the main title, reskilling experienced employees through VR training technology is also possible, or in some cases, perhaps inevitable. As the looming threat of automation and AI comes ever closer for specialists in many industries, the transformation of the job market will drive many to seek solutions and try to avoid disruption. 

Reskilling through virtual training could become one such solution, and not just as an answer to automation, but a wide selection of challenges which we outline below.

Automation and VR Reskilling

Automation is reshaping industries like manufacturing and logistics. As machines take over routine tasks, VR training helps new employees adapt by providing hands-on experience in operating or managing new technologies without real-world risks. For instance:

• Manufacturing: VR simulations can train workers to interact with AI-powered machinery in production lines.
• Customer Service: With basic inquiries handled by chatbots, VR can prepare workers for complex problem-solving that requires human insight.

Reskilling Beyond Automation

As mentioned, the use cases of reskilling go beyond adapting to AI’s increasing potential. Several industries are evolving in parallel to that, creating opportunities for immersive 360° VR training to revolutionize how we prepare people for vastly different jobs than the ones they held before:

• Sustainability: Workers will need to adapt to new, eco-friendly technologies as part of the ongoing greener energy shift. Moreover, VR training technology could also answer the need to retrain those employed in the mining industry as the world moves away from fossil fuels.
• E-commerce and Retail: As consumer behavior shifts ever more toward online shopping, retail workers may need to think about developing skills in digital marketing, logistics, and customer engagement. VR reskilling can simulate these new retail environments, offering experiential learning for the future of work.

The Takeaway

VR upskilling and reskilling initiatives certainly have the potential to bring about massive change. Facilitating the onboarding and re-training of employees within single organizations can be made tremendously easier for individual companies, though the benefits don’t end there. As we enter what is potentially an age of technological breakthroughs, reskilling the broader workforce to teach them to function in new roles can bring about much-needed large-scale social changes.

Are you ready to embrace the learning potential of virtual reality? Contact Us today and let’s explore options that will allow you to retrain your employees quicker and better than the traditional ways ever could!