Implementing VR at scale sounds exciting, but the reality is often complex, messy, and full of hard-earned lessons. Few people understand that better than Andy Trainor, former CLO of Walmart, who oversaw one of the largest enterprise VR deployments in history, reaching over 1.4 million associates.
In this interview with VirtualSpeech, Andy shares what went right, what went wrong, and what he wishes he’d known from the start. Whether you’re piloting VR in your organization or preparing for a full rollout, his insights offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at the practical realities of scaling immersive learning.
Key lessons:
If you’re short on time, here are the biggest takeaways from Andy Trainor’s experience:
- Start with a clear, measurable business problem: Don’t use VR for the sake of innovation. Tie it to a specific, high-impact challenge—like preparing staff for Black Friday or improving customer service. Aligning your VR use case with business goals ensures executive buy-in and lasting support.
- Move fast, but get the fundamentals right: Early traction matters. Launch quickly with a clear use case, but make sure basics like device management, charging stations, and user onboarding are solid. A dedicated owner or team is key to making sure nothing falls through the cracks.
- Let the data drive the story: Use feedback and performance data to show the impact of VR. Whether it’s higher test scores or improved retention, share these wins internally. At Walmart, measurable outcomes helped secure executive support and drive further investment.
- Design for behavior change, not just content delivery: VR is most powerful when it builds confidence and changes behavior. Focus on scenarios that immerse learners in realistic environments and let them practice soft skills—not just check knowledge boxes.
- Package and plan for long-term sustainability: Avoid managing multiple vendors and fragmented contracts. Bundle content, hardware, analytics, and support into a single program wherever possible. Think in terms of three-year hardware cycles and use CapEx models to simplify procurement.
- Clean, charge, connect, and repeat: Operational details make or break a VR program. Plan for cleaning protocols, battery management, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Post-COVID, hygiene is non-negotiable, and consistent charging ensures your devices deliver content and return data.
- Consider modern managed services: Today’s tools—from device management platforms to shared mode functionality—make scaling easier than ever. Evaluate managed services from providers like Meta or XR partners that offer all-in-one solutions.
Why Walmart Turned to VR: The Search for Consistency, Effectiveness—and Something Better
When you’re trying to train 1.5 million people across thousands of locations, consistency becomes a major challenge. That was the situation Andy Trainor and his team faced at Walmart.
“We had about 3,000 facilitators delivering training, and as much as we tried, the experience just wasn’t consistent,” Andy explained. “The old ways of training made it hard to guarantee that someone in one store was getting the same quality of training as someone in another.”
On top of that, measuring effectiveness was tough. “In most training situations, all you know is whether someone completed it or passed a quiz. That doesn’t tell you if they actually learned anything,” Andy said. “We wanted training to be more consistent, more effective, and, ideally, something we could show had real ROI.”
That’s what sparked their search for a better approach, and, unexpectedly, VR showed up on their radar in a very unconventional way.
Andy and his team were visiting a local university, not to explore VR, but to figure out how to train their new facilitators. During a tour of the campus, they stumbled upon the athletic complex, and that’s where they saw it.
“There was this guy, dripping in sweat, totally out of breath, swinging at the air with this massive headset on and a thick cable going up to the ceiling. We thought, What the heck is this guy doing? Turns out it was the quarterback for the college football team. He was using virtual reality to prep for their next game, learning defensive formations so he’d know how to react under pressure.”
What really struck Andy wasn’t just the novelty; it was the quarterback’s reaction. “He told us that once he was inside the headset, it felt real. He felt like he was going to get hit. So when game time came around, he didn’t have to think, he just reacted instinctively.”
That was the lightbulb moment. “If it could work for someone like him, in such a high-pressure, high-stakes environment, then we thought—why couldn’t it work for training our people in stores?”
And it turns out, the science backs this up.
A PwC study found that learners trained in VR were up to 4x faster to train compared to traditional classroom learners, and 275% more confident in applying their skills afterward. They also showed 3.75x higher emotional connection to the content and were 4x more focused than their e-learning counterparts.
At VirtualSpeech, we’ve seen similar results. Our research shows that users experience, on average, a 20% improvement in key skills, such as communication, leadership, or negotiation, after just 30 minutes of VR practice. And the feedback from learners often echoes what Andy heard from that quarterback: “It felt real.”
That’s the power of VR. It goes beyond theory and checkboxes. It puts people in realistic situations where they can learn by doing, and feel the pressure of the moment without real-world consequences.
For Walmart, that was the game-changer. VR wasn’t just a cool new tech. It became a way to scale quality training to over a million people while finally tackling the long-standing issues of consistency, engagement, and impact.
“No One Thought We Should Do It”: Dealing With Skepticism and Proving VR Works
It’s easy to look at Walmart’s success with VR training today and assume it was a smooth ride. It wasn’t.
“No one thought we should do it,” Andy Trainor said bluntly. “It was very, very difficult. The only reason we pulled it off was because we were stubborn. We believed in it and had thick skin. We wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
At the time, most people in leadership either didn’t believe VR would work or thought it was just a passing fad. There were also practical challenges. The VR headsets available back then were bulky, tethered to a computer, and difficult to scale.
And then there was the biggest hurdle: training was always the first thing to get cut when budgets got tight.
Instead of trying to convince people with abstract benefits, Andy’s team focused on solving real operational problems and showing, not telling.
“We knew VR was effective. After 30 seconds, your brain thinks the experience is real. And that’s key, because we remember experiences far better than we remember slides or lectures. Experiences become memories. Memories turn into habits. And habits? They become instincts.”
And that’s exactly what they started seeing in the field. Employees who had been trained in VR reacted more instinctively in real-life situations. But they still had to prove it to the skeptics.
So Andy did something simple, but brilliant.
He got all the senior leaders—C-suite execs, decision-makers—into a room. And he had them try a VR program called Walk the Plank. The experience places you on a skyscraper rooftop, where you have to walk out on a narrow plank… and then step off.
Sounds easy enough. Until you put on the headset.
“I had about six of them take turns doing it, in front of each other,” Andy said. “They were laughing when the others froze… until it was their turn. One leader even cried. No one could do it.”
That moment changed everything.
“You can talk about the benefits all day long. But until someone actually experiences VR—until their brain feels the fear, the pressure, the realism—they just won’t get it. That’s what flipped the switch for our leadership team.”
After that, it wasn’t a matter of if they’d use VR—it was about how fast they could scale it.
The key takeaway? If you’re trying to introduce VR (or any new tech), don’t just pitch it. Demo it. Get decision-makers inside the headset. Let them feel it for themselves. Because once they experience how powerful it is, everything changes.
Implementation: Start Small, Prove ROI, Then Scale
When it came to implementing VR training across Walmart, Andy made it clear: they started small, by necessity and by design.
The goal was to solve a specific, measurable business problem that could demonstrate clear ROI before expanding to broader soft skills and larger rollouts. In a company where any program scaled to 1.5 million associates or 5,000 locations becomes a massive investment, proving value early was critical.
The pilot focused on one of the most operationally challenging areas in a grocery store: the “wet wall.” This is the section where leafy greens are stocked. A highly perishable zone affected by humidity, temperature, equipment calibration, and stacking practices. It’s historically the area with the highest product waste and one of the hardest to train new staff on, due to its complexity and variability.
At the time, VR technology was still tethered and limited to 360° video with three degrees of freedom. Even so, they created a short immersive training module where users walked down a virtual wet wall aisle and identified common issues. The experience was gamified: Staff had to spot what was wrong, explain their answers, and get instant feedback. Though the training lasted just 3–4 minutes, it was transformational.
This short, repeatable VR simulation condensed what would typically take weeks of in-store training into minutes. Because the experience recreated issues that might only occur sporadically in the real world, employees were better prepared from day one. They entered the role having already “seen” the problems and knowing how to address them. This had an immediate impact: not only did training time shrink dramatically, but turnover dropped by up to 25%. Many employees had previously quit out of frustration, feeling unprepared, under pressure, and unsupported. VR changed that by giving them confidence from the start.
To validate the results, Walmart launched the pilot in around 50 stores. Two of its 200 training academies, each supporting 10–20 stores, were selected to run the VR module. Another set of stores continued using traditional training methods, giving the team a clean A/B test. After just a couple of months, the benefits were undeniable.
Scaling, however, wasn’t easy. Around this time, Walmart caught wind of a new standalone headset coming to market—the Oculus Go. Though it hadn’t launched yet, Andy and his team moved quickly to secure as many units as possible.
“We bought every single Oculus Go they had from every manufacturer. We bought eighteen thousand of them. My biggest success was that we took all of them from Target, so they couldn’t release them as soon as Walmart because we bought them all.”
This phase proved that starting small, with a clear business case, was the smartest path forward. The ROI was strong enough to silence the sceptics, and the fast scale-up that followed laid the foundation for Walmart’s continued investment in immersive learning.
Logistics: Scaling to 5,000 Stores Without Losing a Single Headset
The success of the pilot made one thing clear: VR was ready to be rolled out across Walmart’s entire footprint. But implementing immersive training at scale wasn’t just a technology challenge; it was a logistics masterclass.
“The hardest part was making sure the headsets didn’t end up lost in the back of a store,” Andy explained. With locations the size of small warehouses and packages arriving daily, they needed a detailed plan: where the devices would be stored, who would manage them, how they’d be charged, connected to Wi-Fi, and checked in and out.
Walmart refined its rollout market by market, tweaking the process until they had a replicable model. Headsets were prepared and packaged centrally, then distributed through Walmart’s 200 training academies, which acted as regional hubs. From there, trainers delivered the kits to stores, set them up, and ensured everything was ready to go.
Every store had a designated point of contact, and so did each academy, creating a clear chain of responsibility. But it wasn’t just operational, it was emotional, too. Walmart turned each headset delivery into a celebration, with balloons, cake, and associate luncheons. “We made it an event,” Andy said. “And the associates loved it.” The excitement translated into real engagement, no small feat for training at this scale.
The Content That Saved 2000+ Lives
By the time Walmart scaled to 5,000 stores, the content had grown beyond initial retail training modules. “We’d expanded it,” Andy said. “We had things like the wet wall, setting up home delivery towers… practical, tactical training that helped stores operate more efficiently.” But the most impactful piece of content—the one that changed everything- was the Active Shooter training.
For years, associates had completed basic compliance e-learning on what to do in these situations. So, once the VR rollout had momentum, they decided to address this training with a fully immersive experience. Walmart closed down a store overnight and filmed a 360-degree simulation of an active shooter scenario. No graphic violence, but it was intense: you heard the shots, saw the gun, and had to make critical decisions in real time.
The experience was emotional by design. Some associates found it triggering, and Andy’s response was firm: “That’s the point. Would you rather discover this isn’t the environment for you during a real-life incident, or in a safe, controlled headset experience, with a facilitator there to help debrief?”
The result was groundbreaking. The training became mandatory every quarter, with a facilitator guiding the first session. Over a million associates were going through it every three months. Then, in 2019, tragedy struck in El Paso, Texas. A shooter killed 23 people in a Walmart store, but over 2,000 others escaped safely. When the company reviewed the incident, they discovered something remarkable: nearly every associate said they instinctively knew what to do, because they’d done the VR training.
“They didn’t have to think. They just acted,” Andy said. “That’s when we realized the true power of virtual reality. If it could prepare people for the worst moment of their lives, imagine what else it could do.”
Overcoming Roadblocks: “Don’t ask if you can do it, ask how.”
Rolling out VR training across Walmart meant facing resistance from every department. “Everyone’s first reaction was no,” said Andy. “From finance to security to leadership to tech.” But instead of backing down, he encouraged his team to reframe the conversation: “Don’t ask if we can do it—ask how.” That mindset forced teams to think in solutions, not barriers.
After securing leadership buy-in, finance was the next major challenge. Convincing them to fund 18,000 headsets required a strong ROI case. “Really lean in on the ROI,” Andy explained. “Don’t discount the employee engagement benefit. Operations care about that.” He also learned the importance of a lease-to-own model to avoid massive upfront costs and extend hardware life.
Technical support and security brought more hurdles, setting up a call center and ensuring data stayed secure, but Andy remained focused: “Anything worth doing is hard. And if it hasn’t been done before, it’s because it was hard.”
Despite the bumps, the rollout hit all 5,000 stores in under two years. “Go so fast they can’t change their mind,” he said. Relentlessness and smart reframing turned roadblocks into action.
Lessons learned: Thighs he would have done differently
Looking back, Andy pinpointed three major issues that could have been tackled more effectively: device charging, content availability, and cleanliness. “What was happening is someone would use a headset and they wouldn’t plug it back in,” he said. “So it would die. And then you get nothing: no update, no new content, no data.”
A more reliable charging solution could’ve streamlined data collection and improved content delivery. At launch, only four training modules were available; while that eventually grew to over 100, a broader content library early on would have increased usage and reduced the “use-it-once-a-quarter” problem.
Cleanliness also became a critical concern, especially during COVID. “Before COVID, people didn’t really care how clean the headsets were. Then suddenly, no one wanted to share a device,” Andy explained. Walmart had to respond quickly with strict cleaning protocols, disposable covers, and feedback to manufacturers about the risks of fabric facial interfaces.
His biggest takeaway?
“You’ve got to have an owner who ensures this stuff actually happens—otherwise it doesn’t.”
Conclusion: Scaling VR Isn’t About the Tech — It’s About the People
Andy Trainor’s experience rolling out VR to 1.4 million Walmart associates proves that success isn’t just about cutting-edge technology — it’s about operational clarity, ownership, and long-term thinking. From charging devices to maintaining hygiene protocols, from budgeting smartly to bundling vendors, every detail matters when you’re working at scale.
The good news? Companies today don’t have to start from scratch. Solutions have matured, pricing models have evolved, and platforms now offer more integrated, enterprise-ready options. But the core lesson still holds: if you want VR training to succeed, it needs more than a headset; it needs a strategy, a champion, and a clear path to sustained value.
Whether you’re just getting started or looking to expand, the blueprint is here. Learn from the early challenges, build with scale in mind, and stay focused on the people behind the technology.
VirtualSpeech provides immersive soft skills training powered by VR and AI. Book a demo to explore how it can benefit your organization.
