In this post we will explain VR/AR applications for companies, and we will focus on improving Soft Skills. If you want to know how to improve Hard Skills, we explain it to you in this other post.
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have come to professional training field to stay. There are already many companies that have relied on the potential for learning and retention offered by these new technological tools, and have also verified their effective results.
Samir Estefan, manager of Lenovo Education Latin America, explained in an interview for Generación Universitaria how we currently have confirmed hypotheses that suggest that people retain more knowledge when we live the experience from Virtual Reality than from a traditional class. Samsung has also carried out various field studies in which it has been able to verify, for example, that 83% of teachers consider that VR/AR helps improve learning outcomes. Other research conducted by Beijing Bluefocus E-Commerce Co in collaboration with Beijing iBokan Wisdom Mobile Internet Technology Training found, using an experimental design, how students with lower than average scores increased their scores above average after taking a curriculum that incorporated Virtual Reality. In the post about pedagogical benefits for retention and engagement, we will delve deeper into these scientifically valid studies that question the traditional educational system and open the door to new, more effective ways of learning.
But now let’s return to the training field for professionals. In line with the title that gives this post its name, it is worth celebrating that, in recent decades, large multinationals have opted for the workers comprehensive training: in an era in which mechanical jobs are easily replaced by machinery, not only skills and technical knowledge do not matter, but attitudes, values, problem-solving capacity, creativity or emotional intelligence – popularly known as Soft Skills – now play a crucial role in human resources.
The term Soft Skills is quite well known in the business world, but for those who have not yet had the opportunity to read about it, we will proceed to explain what it refers to. Soft Skills is an umbrella term that is usually used to define a series of productive personality traits that characterize a person’s relationships with their environment (in this case with their work environment, but these are skills that can be extrapolated to the personal and psychosocial). These skills can be communicative, emotional, teamwork and leadership, we can even refer to self-esteem or the ability to compromise as part of this umbrella. To be somewhat more specific, we can refer to the following categorization published by the University of Kentucky, according to which they would be part of the Soft Skills:
- Communication skills: either by written or oral channel, in personal treatment or in public.
- Courtesy: widely studied by discourse analysis theorists, it refers to the ability to communicate our message with respect and education, making our interlocutor feel comfortable even when the issues we are talking about are tricky or problematic.
- Flexibility: adaptability, willingness to change and desire for continuous learning, understanding the new as a source of information and as a challenge to overcom
- Integrity: sincerity and honesty anchored in personal values
- Positive and proactive attitude: being enthusiastic and able to motivate ourselves and those around us
- Interpersonal skills: being a natural, warm, pleasant person, who knows how to get a certain sense of humor in more informal contexts, with empathy and self-knowledge when building personal, social or professional bonds
- Professionalism: being able to use the appropriate verbal and non-verbal language in each context, knowing the formal and colloquial registers and understanding when to put each of them into practice
- Responsibility: is related to the ability to commitment to oneself and to others, being aware of our capabilities and our own limits, and using them with common sense, meeting deadlines and being punctual in meetings or when entering to work.
- Capacity for teamwork: we are a social animal, as Aristotle already said with his Zoon Politikon. We all have within us the capacity and nature of personal relationships, but when there are objectives and possible problems in between, organization among team members is key to overcoming them. In this sense, the ability to work as a team refers to the skills of cooperation and intergroup work management.
- Creativity: is the cognitive ability to generate new ideas or concepts, or new associations between already given ideas or concepts. Both at work and personally, it helps us to find original solutions, or to ask ourselves new questions that illuminate new alternatives or paths to follow.
- Problem-solving capacity: this Soft Skill is actually a symbiosis between several of the previous ones. It is related to the effectiveness and efficiency when it comes to addressing and solving problems, conflicts or discrepancies.
- Being organized: it is a skill that allows us to get the best out of ourselves, a kind of discipline that allows our other skills and attitudes to be combined in an orderly and an optimal way to get the best out of ourselves.
A major study by the Stanford Research Institute and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation revealed that 75% of long-term career success was due to soft skills, and only 25% to hard skills. Soft Skills not only increase employee productivity, but also – and here lies the most important issue – they allow us to feel well-being and tranquility in our jobs. First, because they allow us to exploit our hard skills and optimize them; second, because, by referring to interpersonal relationships, they help build a better work environment and increase assertiveness and empathy among colleagues. In monetary terms, this translates into a return on investment, because employees, feeling better in their jobs, increase their motivation and thus their productivity; but also because occupational risks or possible diligence or negligence are reduced by building a calmer and safer work environment.
And in this sense of Soft Skills training, Virtual Reality has a lot to contribute. Most Soft Skills training simply consists of online courses, sometimes called “express capsules”, in which the student must complete some readings and tests, which is totally far from the reality that he will later have to face as a professional. The next level of training quality would be to organize Role Play games, but these have a high economic cost and great logistical complexity, because they require, for example, the actors hiring, in addition to the mobility of the worker who is being trained.
But, how do we use VR/RA to optimize these little logistical hurdless? A clear example would be the VR experience (360º 3D video) that we have developed together with UOC Corporate for training in Communication and Feedback. It is a training capsule that is already underway and is bearing fruit, in addition to having been awarded by Immersive Learning Research Network in London. With this training we achieve a reduction in costs by simplifying logistics, since employees can take advantage of small time spaces to complete the learning, without the need to move from their jobs.
Another of the undoubted benefits of taking advantage of immersive technologies for professionals training is the fact that they increase engagement and content retention by more than 50%. Because it is not the same, for example, to read what assertive communication is, than to experience it in first person, being able to choose between different options, interacting, identifying the verbal and non-verbal language that characterizes it, and also being able to count on a post-experience debriefing that ensures key ideas retention. Although it is still an online training, we eliminate that distance from the screen because the student finds himself in a 100% immersive environment, in which gamification means that, being the protagonist, we learn more and better, without giving up the quality of the content or the learning guarantee. This would not be possible without the high technical quality of the content: if we build a digital environment that is not photorealistic, we will completely lose the feeling of truthfulness in the training. That is why at Immersium Studio we always take care that, in addition to the educational content being of quality and designed by pedagogues, the environments are millimetrically designed for that immersion.
Training in Soft Skills is a safe bet because it increases the worker productivity and because it also teaches us vital things not only for our work environment, but also for our social or family environment. We encourage assertiveness, teamwork and education in emotional intelligence, which can make us more decisive people when dealing with conflicts or obstacles also personally. And Virtual Reality is the tool that allows us to simplify logistics and overcome traditional forms of learning, optimizing time and increasing engagement and retention of content and allowing us to acquire skills and “flight hours”.
If you have any questions about our immersive experience to improve Communication and Feedback, or want to tell us about your professional project, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to find the immersive solution that best suits your challenge.
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