A silent virtual reality revolution occurs at Walmart. Since 2017, when the company has started using virtual reality headsets in its training centers – called “Walmart Academies” – Walmart has used technology to improve employee experience, better assess the skills of workers and present new ways to train staff.
According to Andy Trainor, vice-president of learning at Walmart, virtual reality in the retail environment has a lot of sense, especially in open stores 24 hours a day. Why?
“Because you don't have the opportunity to train after the hours and you don't want to disturb your customers on the ground,” he said. “Virtual reality allows you to artificially create scenarios that you cannot recreate on the sales floor in a way that partners can learn in a safe environment.”
In this spirit, Walmart uses virtual reality, otherwise known as VR, in several ways, such as the preparation of employees for agitation when customers are swapping the Black Friday stores and the evaluation of the way workers react to angry buyers. In addition, virtual reality is used to determine which employees have the skills necessary to fill the intermediate management positions.
What Walmart leaders have found is that VR is particularly well working well when the deployment of new technologies and new processes.
“We used virtual reality to train partners on pickup towers, which are 15 -foot automatic distributors that allow customers to recover online orders,” said Trainor.
Since the use of virtual reality, Walmart has experienced improvements in employee test results from training sessions, and technology has enabled the company to introduce new training programs.
“When we used the Oculus Rift VR headset in class, we have noticed an increase in test scores between 5% and 10%,” he said. “We are starting to replace certain modules of global learning management system which can take 30 to 45 minutes and the transition to a module of three to five minutes in the virtual reality environment.”
According to business managers, in February, 10,000 of the 1.2 million Walmart employees carried out skills management assessments using VR. Later this year, Walmart plans to train more than a million employees in 4,000 stores using the autonomous helmet.
Trainor said that the Walmart HR organization had helped develop training. Now that the company has deployed VR in each store, HR professionals from each store will manage the devices and will facilitate training.
“It is important to bring the HR partners throughout the trip so that they can see the advantages of the first hand and become a defender of this new way of educating the partners,” he said.
Align virtual reality with commercial objectives
HR managers seeking to use virtual reality in their training programs should not only consider how technology can improve employee training, but should also consider how technology can strengthen the company's overall commercial objectives. They should also reflect on a partnership with a virtual reality supplier for at least two years, said Derek Belch, CEO of Strivr, a Menlo Park company in California, which designed the Walmart virtual reality training program.
“You have to learn what this technology is and what it is, what it does and what it does not do,” said Belch. “HR managers must think about implementing technology in the right way. You cannot just conquer content and put it in a room and hope that someone would use it. It's just a disaster recipe. We see a lot of businesses, for lack of a better term, tinker that and they do not get real commercial results.”
The research of Superdata, an Nielsen company, estimates that 71% of companies using VR use technology for training.
At Fidelity Investments Inc., VR headsets are used to train new workers on empathy. These employees are guided through a virtual telephone call with a “customer” of loyalty going through a financial crisis. At UPS, HTC Vive VR headsets are used to help drivers identify potential dangers while “driving” on a virtual road. American Airlines uses VR to familiarize new crew members with security procedures before starting their jobs.
Do not neglect human interaction
Although the use of virtual reality to train employees is at its beginnings, there is enormous value to use virtual reality to train employees, said Sarah Brennan, CEO and director of Accelir Insights, an HR technology consulting company based in Milwaukee. Brennan predicts that the VR will have a significant impact on job and integration staff.
(SHRM members' toolbox: Manage the integration and assimilation process of employees))
“I would not be surprised to see VR used for hiring,” said Brennan. “Before the candidates take a job, they can really understand what it would be to do the job. They will have a better idea of what it does to be in a lively cuisine, or what it is to be behind an desk when you get screaming by a customer.”
HR managers must be aware that in some extreme cases – such as preparing soldiers to see in war areas or leading help for what they might encounter in a terrorist attack – workers using virtual reality need additional support, she said.
“Many things could go wrong, and my fear would be that we jump too far to trust only technology,” said Brennan. “There must be the communication and the possibility of questions and interactions with another person. Managers must ensure that they take care of the whole person. Do not presume that technology can manage everything.”
Nicole Lewis is an independent journalist based in Miami. It covers business, technology and public policies.
