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Guide for training employees in VR (from 1000s of hours of experience)

January 18, 2023 - Dom Barnard

This guide is aimed at training managers, L&D professionals, and corporate trainers looking to introduce virtual reality (VR) into their training program, whether that be in-person or online.

The tips and comments in this article are based on our own experiences, primarily training soft skills – your experience using VR may differ from ours.

Tips for training employees in VR


1. Combine VR with traditional training

This statement comes from a couple of core observations:

  • People don’t want to spend too much time in VR
  • Skills take many hours to learn, practice, and improve

The feedback we received from employees using our application shows that learners (especially new learners) didn’t want to spend more than 30 minutes in a VR headset in a single session.

In addition, learning a new skill, such as how to deliver a sales pitch, takes hours of training before being competent. Combining VR with traditional training methods has several benefits:

  • Users can spend well over an hour in one session learning the core material through in-person training or online tutorial videos
  • Users can then practice specific parts of the training in 15-30 minute VR modules
  • Users improve skills more quickly with this blended approach because they are learning in a more familiar environment and then able to practice their new skills in the safety of the virtual world.

So, how exactly can VR be integrated?

  • Online with VR – employees learn through tutorial videos, quizzes, case studies and articles. They can practice in VR what they are learning at key points throughout the e-learning. Our courses have 3-6 VR training exercises spread throughout the course.
  • In-person with VR – employees learn through instructor-led classroom activities and presentations. They can then practice in VR what they’ve learned towards the end of the training session, either in breakout areas or as a take home exercise.

VR practice for soft skills

2. Training needs to be very structured

Most users will be unfamiliar with VR and any training performed in VR needs to be well structured, so that the user knows what to do once in VR, which buttons to press, how to complete scenarios, and so on.

Visual and audio cues can guide an employee through the training. These might include audio voiceovers explaining what the employee needs to do at the start of the training, or arrow indicators if the user is looking in the wrong direction (it’s easy for users to look in the wrong direction as they can look anywhere in VR).

3. Which headsets to use?

There are many pros and cons for the different types of VR headsets, we recommend standalone headsets, such as the Meta Quest, Vive Focus and Pico.

Standalone headsets

We’ve found standalone headsets to be the best combination of cost, convenience and quality. The Meta Quest 3 costs $499.99 as of this writing this, and provides a very good immersive experience.

Companies have multiple training options with standalone headsets:

  • Share a Meta Quest headset amongst several employees, using a VR lab or rental system similar to a library.
  • Provide each employee with a Meta Quest, which we’ve found is popular amongst companies looking to have a more extensive VR catalogue. Although this is a high upfront cost, if VR training will be a large part of their future training curriculum and if a large number of employees will be using it, it makes sense that they should all have access to their own headset.

4. Read a short instructional training guide before entering VR

For new VR users, simply telling them to put on a headset and start practicing isn’t going to be effective. You’ll need to explain what they are going to see, what they need to do and what is expected of them. Because it is a new learning experience with a new technology, they will require some initial guidance.

Providing a short guide to the VR training they are about to participate in is a great way to prepare them. A 1-2 page document (including images) is enough to prepare the user and explain elements such as:

  • How the features work (e.g. how to use the speech analysis feature)
  • How to interact with buttons (do they hover over an action button or click their controller to action it?)
  • How to navigate around the different VR environments
  • What the hand controller buttons do (if using a headset with a hand controller)
  • How long the VR experience will last

5. Make the VR experience simple and easy to use

Virtual reality is still a very new technology. Employees may have heard of the technology; however few have had the chance to try it, and if they have, it is usually through gaming and not education.

Because of this, VR training applications need to be extremely simple and intuitive. Having watched employees use our VR training for the first time, it’s interesting to notice how some users struggle with basic features and uses of VR.

For example, when someone is supposed to look to the left, they may not automatically turn their head, and instead just their eyes, because they are not used to being inside an experience and not just observing it. Any VR training really does need to be extremely intuitive.

We’ve found that a simple, easy to use VR app beats a feature-rich experience for the user as some start to feel overwhelmed. A few years in the future, this is likely to change as user habits develop and more employees become familiar with VR.

6. ROI can be measured and useful metrics tracked

As explained in our white paper, VR provides organizations with unique and unparalleled insights into an employee’s behavior.

In VR, you can measure and track a range of employee skills like never before and build corporate training programs around any weaknesses so that the employee can perform their job more effectively.

For example, in our VR application, we can provide data on presentation performance, including:

  • How well an employee used eye contact during a presentation, and whether they were looking at certain parts of the room for too long
  • Whether they used certain keywords and phrases
  • Whether they were talking too quickly, too slowly, too loudly or too quietly
  • How many hesitation words were used

ROI in VR - tracking employee progress

Some of the performance metrics in the VirtualSpeech app.

7. Not all employees will want to wear a VR headset

This is an important point – not all employees will be willing to use a VR headset. This defines the type of training you can perform in VR and how to roll it out into your organisation.

At this point, you can’t really perform compulsory corporate training in VR or roll out VR training to all employees (as not all employees will be willing to do it).

A better solution is to make VR training optional, where employees can opt-in to take the training, much, in the same way, organizations have a catalog of online and in-person training courses. Adding VR training courses to this catalog is an effective way to introduce VR into an organisation.

8. A small number may feel motion sickness

A small portion of employees who try VR for the first time will feel slight motion sickness. Although usually not severe, it is worth being aware of and warning employees of this before they try the VR training.

There are measures you can use to reduce this effect – for example, we limit our VR training scenarios to 15-30 minute sessions and minimize head movement around VR scenes.

Motion sickness amongst first time users will reduce as headset quality increases (with increased FPS, higher resolution and a wider field of view). Generally, motion sickness is caused by the VR environment around the user moving, while they remain static – it confuses their inner equilibrium. This is also one of the reasons we focus on untethered headsets, where the VR environments aren’t moving around the user.

9. Time and sessions in a VR headset

We believe time in a VR headset needs to be limited to under 30 minutes. Beyond this point, people can start to feel motion sickness or dizziness, particularly first-time users, partly because they are not used to being ‘cut off’ from the real world.

Data from our VR app shows that when a user is using VR for the first time, session time is around 12 minutes, increasing to over 20 minutes after a few weeks.

Average number of sessions and time in the VirtualSpeech app

Randomly selecting data from over 500 learners provided this information about usage in the VirtualSpeech VR training app:

  • People train for an average of 6.20 sessions
  • People train for an average total time of 76 minutes
  • People spend on average 12 minutes per session

The data suggests VR training programs should be completable within 90 minutes, as most people do not voluntarily train in VR for more than this.

The hour training program could be split into 15-minute VR sessions, as our data shows the number of people training in VR for longer than 15 minutes (without taking their headset off) drops dramatically.Average vr app session time in training

The peak app session time is around 15 minutes. This is roughly what we expected from feedback and observing people using our training.

10. Employee age and willingness to use VR

Contrary to what we expected, there hasn’t been any noticeable difference in willingness to try VR between younger and older employees.

This goes against the idea that VR is only suitable for younger employees due to the relative newness of the technology.

VirtualSpeech for Business

Discover the benefits of VirtualSpeech VR training over classroom and self-paced e-learning.Download eBook

11. Training employees in-person

We’ve had several training companies incorporate virtual reality into their in-person training sessions. VR was typically used at the end of the session, giving the participants a chance to practice what they had learned throughout the rest of the training.

We’ve found that breaking the cohort into smaller groups (of 4-6 people) works well. While one of the groups is practicing in VR, other groups are performing other activities, such as writing a speech or creating presentation slides to add into the VR app.

In the VR group, each participant practices a speech or presentation for 5-7 minutes, so that the group of 4 completes the VR session in around 30 minutes before another group is rotated into the VR section.

Using VR in groups of 4 means that people aren’t waiting around for too long. One headset can be shared amongst the 4 group members, with 1 presenting and the other 3 listening to the presentation and providing feedback.

If you have the resources and space to practice, you could purchase 4 Meta Quest headsets so that multiple groups, or a higher number of learners, can practice at the same time.

Another option is group employee training performed remotely in VR with an instructor.

12. Why people enrolled in our VR training

When users enrol in our training, there is an optional feedback form where we collect information about why they purchased the training.

Here’s a selection of answers organized by category, so that you can get an idea of why employees may be interested in VR training:

Better way to practice

  • “I feel this is an excellent way to practice at home. I am in toastmasters and I find rehearsal at home very boring. This is an amazing way to bring joy into my practice instead of literally talking to a wall”
  • “The idea of having factual feedback rather than polite generic feedback is great”
  • “I wanted something I could do in my own time rather than have to physically go somewhere on a specific date”
  • “To become a more effective speaker by practicing more regularly. Specifically, I’d like to reduce anxiety around public speaking and interviewing”

Career

  • “Getting into a pharmacy career”
  • “This is one of my greatest fears and I’ll be running for office, so this will be really useful”
  • “I have PhD in business management and I need to have polished public speaking skills in order to speak in front of CEOs, CFOs, etc.”

Upcoming event

  • “Need to improve my confidence with public speaking. Especially for a wedding speech as best man”
  • “Speaking in court”
  • “I’m preparing to pitch for investment for my business concept and I’ve no experience doing this. I’m hoping to learn how to come across confident and reduce my nerves in the real scenario by practicing in VR”

Improve speaking skills

  • “Get over my fear of public speaking
  • “I want to improve my own presentation skills and excel in the very competitive job market nowadays”
  • “Brush up on presentation skills that will be useful on my new entrepreneurial journey”
  • “I have to improve myself exponentially as far as public speaking is concerned”
  • “I really want to get better at public speaking. I have an irrational fear”

Personal development

  • “I am a person who stutters. I have a lot of problems, for example I am really frightened about speaking to lots people”
  • “I’m really keen to find something more effective to develop my language skills”
  • “I’m a digital marketing expert with 8 years of experience, I don’t speak well when it comes to public speaking, group discussion. I want to learn soft skill, remove public speaking phobia and engage the audience while speaking”
  • “To practice and study English for business and improve my communication skills”

If you have any questions about incorporating VR training into your organization or are interested in using our VR soft skills training, you can contact us.

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