At all stages of the framework for growth, technology, can touch, enable, and drive your highly productive culture by increasing people performance and productivity.
Much has been written about the digital transformation we have all experienced during the pandemic. Yet how much of this technology excites, engages, and inspires our people and stakeholders?
So many tech tools at work are there to save time, reduce costs, protect assets, analyse our output. Not exactly inspiring stuff for everyone. Yet in our personal lives, our tech devices feel unique and special to us. Alexa helps us get up in the morning, our watches know how many steps we want to do, and as for our mobile devices, I’d argue they are a genuine extension of our bodies! How do you feel when you can’t find your phone? Panic, loss? Like your arm has been cut off? And as for the kids, well, many of them are simply in love with tech. Anyone who has seen teenagers excited by online gaming or apps, knows that its like they are in another world, when they are playing and learning.
In designing your organisations future, and cultivating your culture, how do you inject some fun and energy into the technology that will support your change journey?
Extended Reality (XR)
Extended Reality (XR) is an experience or environment that combines virtual and physical realities through wearable technologies or computer technology. The X can stand for any letter – Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR.)
XR can offer huge scope to drive business success, engaging customers deeply, creating immersive training solutions, streamlining business processes, such as manufacturing, or generally offering customers innovative solutions to their challenges. Plus, it’s genuinely exciting and fun tech to get your hands on.
We shouldn’t ever underestimate the power of fun – we’re more likely to learn things – about ourselves, each other, our business and our customers.
How Does Virtual Reality Work for Business?
It’s understandable if you think that virtual reality is something that is mostly destined for the gaming industry? But think again. This may have been true at first, but lately, the focus of all virtual reality innovations is shifting more and more onto business applications. Whilst many of these may be a flash in the pan, its also fair to say that organisations who do take a chance and invest in this innovative tech, could get a head-start on productivity, that will help propel you further ahead.
The good news is that investing in a tech innovation doesn’t have to be a life-or-death decision for your business. Little tools and apps that help bring more value to your processes don’t usually require a huge investment, so even if some of them end up not making a difference, it wouldn’t be a major loss.
In one way or another VR is the future. Virtual and augmented reality will become an $80 million market according to a new report conducted by Goldman Sachs. To put this in perspective, this is roughly the size of the desktop PC market today, so it would be wise to get used to it and experiment with as many forms of VR products as possible.
Five Ways You Can Use Virtual Reality for the Workplace
1 Employer Branding
Ask the HR or People Director in your team what one of their never-ending challenges is, and undoubtedly the attraction and retention of talent will feature. From a candidate’s point of view its much easier to find out ‘what its really like’ to work somewhere. We check out social media, employee connections on LinkedIn, and online employer reviews. AR and VR offers employers the opportunity to take potential employees into workspaces; the head office, the factory floor, the logistics operation, the company get togethers. Immersive, 360-degree tours give a real-life sense of the organisation, supporting candidates in uncovering opportunities that match their values and aspirations.
2 Create Incredible employee training experiences.
It’s not just NASA who gets to simulate work environments. There are numerous ‘soft skill’ VR packages and team building VR arenas available, that speed up the time to learn, improve retention, plus (again!) it’s fun!
Let’s say there is a mismatch, between your inspiring storytelling, about the change you are undergoing, and your team’s ability to tell these stories in an inspiring way. There are high quality VR training experiences that enable people to train and practice presenting, pitching and storytelling. Immersive head-set experiences offering real life nerves and real time AI based feedback on where to improve. Feedback for example on pace of speech, how interesting you are, eye contact. Best of all you practice as and when you want.
When you think about training in a virtual ‘real life’ world, it makes perfect sense that this would be an impactful way of learning. Edgar Dale’s Cone of Learning reminds us, what I think we know instinctively. We retain about 10% of what we read, but 90% of knowledge when we ‘do something.’ Studies consistently show that training using VR to develop skills not only improves retention, but can be x 4 quicker in covering learning content and at scale is cheaper than both classroom and eLearning.
3 Excite Customers through immersive marketing.
Industries such as manufacturing can really differentiate their offering using AR or VR. Increasingly organisations are offering demos using VR or AR to share the complexity of a process, machinery, or capabilities, as a way of growing awareness and encouraging interest.
4 Transform online collaboration into a True Community
There are already lots of tools that businesses have adopted to work with freelancers or employees located at a distance. Managers tend to be content with conversations over Skype or Slack. They think this real-time collaboration is as real as it can get. But when VR also comes into the equation, and meetings become ‘face to face’ in the same room using a headset, energy is injected back into a meeting.
Furthermore, you enable your teams to build a sense of community, previously restricted to a traditional office setting. You could even mix AR and VR for an incredible blend that will completely transform your workplace collaboration for the better. It is much easier to generate creative thinking when people feel a sense of genuine togetherness, even if they are geographically apart, but together in a ‘virtual’ meeting room.
5 Bring Products to life for customers
How difficult do you find it to picture where furniture will go when you move house, or what a kitchen would look like with new units? Becoming more mainstream are VR suites taking the dimensions of your own spaces and showing you what a new kitchen would look like! Improving customer experiences, satisfaction and choice are just 3 benefits.
Most of us have grown up taught through passive learning, passive marketing and being ‘told’ how to use technology already chosen for us at work. In VR, we learn and experience through interactions. Organisations can now bring change to life in an exciting, engaging, and inspiring way.
Connect now to discover how XR can add value for you, your people and your business.
Interested to know more then please contact: fiona.anderson@MyChangeExpert.com