Introduction

Fads tend to come and go very quickly, whereas trends tend to last for years or decades, evolving and changing as they go. Metaverse technology and online immersive experiences are gaining in popularity and have the potential to revolutionise the way corporate learning programmes are delivered. According to a McKinsey report, three of five business leaders expect the metaverse to change the way their organisations operate.

So, is learning in the metaverse here to stay or will it have short lived popularity and soon die away?

In our recent webinar, our very own Drew McGuire sat down with Joe Millward, General Manager of Asia Pacific, Talespin and Richard Lago, Chief Growth Officer, Jenson8 to discover how the rise of virtual reality platforms reflects the expanding use of the metaverse to deal to the age-old problem of delivering impactful learning at scale.

Here are some of his responses to some of the key questions asked during the webinar. Its an interesting insight into how our thinking about VR and the metaverse is evolving here at Capability Group.

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What business needs do the Metaverse solves?

Metaverse spaces are entering our daily lives, by bridging the physical and digital worlds. What business needs or challenges do the metaverse, or virtual reality, promise to solve?

The digital experiences we engage with in our personal lives outside of work are forever changing and our expectations are rapidly evolving. Many of these experiences are exceptional, getting a taxi, ordering food, some online banking experiences, gaming, etc.

However, our digital experiences in our work lives are often a completely different ball game. This often results in a suboptimal employee experience.

I believe VR promises to transform the employee experience, everything from onboarding, training, collaboration and wellbeing. VR will turn the dial on all the metrics you have around all these aspects of the employee experience. And of course VR is one of the best ways for organisations to building skills quickly at scale.

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Can the metaverse solve long-standing problems in learning?

Do you think that the metaverse can help to solve some long-standing problems in the field of corporate learning (such as knowledge retention, engagement, or scaling)?

Totally and we are experiencing this first hand with VR. The biggest thing for me is that the learning done in VR sticks. Whether I have a deep personal insight about how I behave in an ambiguous or challenging situation or quickly building communication skills, learning in an immersive environment sticks, you don’t forget! And, of course, VR is all those other things …. engaging, scalable and has great data and analytics.

“I believe VR promises to transform the employee experience, everything from onboarding, training, collaboration and wellbeing”

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What VR platforms are available?

What virtual reality platforms and solutions are available today? Could you share examples of free-to-use, easy-to-access, or high-impact solutions?

There are a proliferation of platforms and solutions coming to the market, but they are not all equal when it comes to the impact they have on learning in a corporate environment.

Our focus at Capability Group is high impact and for us Jenson8 and Talespin are the most impactful in the market today, based on the research and market scanning we have done.

Jenson8 is all about impactful group experiences that generate deep personal insights and result in accelerated team cohesion and development of leadership skills.

Talespin is about asynchronous / individual skills building through skills practice … a game changer for your frontline employees where time is short, turnover quite high and the need to build skills fast is critical to business success.

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How to measure VR ROI?

How can companies navigate the challenges of assessing the effectiveness of metaverse-based learning, especially in terms of ROI?

I genuinely don’t believe it’s a challenge to demonstrate ROI with these VR platforms.

If you start with the business metrics you want to shift (e.g. reduce # of onboarding days, improve sales conversions, reduce days lost due to manual handling accidents … all of these have a $$ value and can feed into your ROI calculations.

There are also learning activities that you will be replacing that also have a $$ value (reduction in use of facilitators, reducing learning design time, reduced travel, reduced time off the job, reduced spend on e-learning, etc).

Traditional ways of delivering learning at scale to a geographically distributed workforce is incredibly expensive and time consuming. VR’s ROI is particularly significant at scale!

Lean into your supplier to help you determine the ROI with your data … its our bread and butter, we are doing it everyday and we are always happy to share our knowledge.

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Why VR now?

Why is now the right time to be considering VR and the metaverse in our learning strategies?

Here’s are the key points that I believe answer the question “why now?”

1. Cost of hardware has come down
2. Cost of development dropping as design apps get better
3. Technology is good enough
4. Bandwidth is good enough
5. Our mindsets towards use of digital tools for learning has shifted significantly in the past 3 years
6. The war for talent and EVP has never been more important
7. We need to build skills fast

Explore more about VR insights and how to enhance learning impact with our RevealVR offering.