Health and safety training can sometimes be a dry topic, however here at VRE, we have seen first-hand how VR can transform engagement and learning for safety-critical training.
We provide our own VR health and safety training and also collaborate with VR health and safety partners to offer a wide variety of training programmes including virtual reality healthcare simulation and virtual reality training for healthcare professionals.
VR healthcare training has proven to be highly effective, with academic research showing significantly improved retention of vital safety knowledge when learned through virtual reality. This increased knowledge retention, in turn, has a profound impact on workplace safety.
VR Hire Hubs to Enable Training Anywhere
In addition to our VR H&S training, we offer VR headset rentals. If you choose to hire VR equipment from us, we can have it delivered to your location the very next day. Our friendly orientation team will then arrange a one-on-one session to ensure you are comfortable and confident using the VR headsets.
We can even come to your location and assist in running roadshows or health and safety weeks on-site, should you wish.
VR Health and Safety Training Can Be More Cost-effective
We provide several off-the-shelf products that can be used as-is or customised to suit your organisation’s specific industry and environment, with adjustments made to address particular hazards.
Recent advancements in virtual reality technology have made health and safety training accessible to businesses of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This means that your VR healthcare training can be scalable, eliminating the need for expensive trainers to travel. We can provide a VR headset for training at each site, enabling employees to access critical skills and knowledge at any time.
Our company specialises in VR training, offering both off-the-shelf training products and customised training solutions tailored to specific applications and industries.
If you’re interested in enhancing your health and safety training through the power of VR, we’d be delighted to discuss your requirements. Our team includes experienced IOSH chartered health and safety experts, ensuring that we deliver the most effective training, supercharged by virtual reality.
VR Health and Safety Weeks or Roadshows
A key use of VR health and safety has been for short experiences to raise health and safety awareness at company roadshows or safety weeks.
We have worked extensively with companies in this area and it has been a very popular use of VR, ideally suited for short impactful experiences to get an important health and safety message across.
Amazon uses our VR hire and health and safety training at various sites around the UK for their H&S weeks, helping them make important safety messages more memorable.
Dyson have used our training products for a range of their roadshows, held in public spaces across the company, raising awareness of key messages for site and personnel safety.
H&S Training the VRE Way
Slips, Trips and Falls
Our slip, trips and falls training module challenges users to identify safety hazards in a simulated environment.
At the end of the assessment, learners discuss their responses with their trainer, helping them to understand anything they missed.
Fire Safety Awareness
The Fire Safety Awareness module checks users understanding of the correct response to encountering a fire.
Raising the alarm and finding a safe evacuation route are prioritised, with an optional section teaching team members how to select and use the appropriate fire extinguisher for different fire types.
This module also includes optional training on routine testing as part of a fire management process. For example, emergency lighting tests, alarm tests, evacuation drills and fire extinguisher checks are covered.
Confined Spaces
The confined spaces training module places trainees in a VR scenario where they are operating in a confined space workplace.
Learners are guided through the process of identifying the confined space, and are introduced to strategies to prevent workplaces from becoming confined in the first place.
Users are challenged to make the confined workplace safe before entering it.
Documentation, risk assessments and safety equipment relevant to confined spaces are introduced, and learners are taught how to use these tools effectively and safely.
Bespoking
Our team are able to bespoke any of our existing VR training modules to better suit your business’ needs.
We can remodel the virtual environment to represent your own workplace or add extra features, challenges and options.
The sky is the limit. Contact us to discuss the possibilities of bespoke content.
Track, Record, Analyse with our VR Learning Management System
Our VR training platform allows you measure trainees’ behaviour and performance in each of our modules.
Track who completed the module, how long they took and what choices they made.
Understand trends in this data and get answers to important questions such as which mistakes your team make most often. Gain insights into revisions you should make to your existing training materials. Learn what approach your teams take in the VR training simulations.
This invaluable information can be analysed by session, groups, departments or the organisation as a whole.
Why VR for H&S?
VR gives learners the freedom to fail
You learn to ride a bike by wobbling – and then learning to balance.
Being able to see the consequences of our actions has informed our learning throughout our lives. VR allows workers to make mistakes and ignore processes, and observe the consequences – without risking any actual harm.
This makes for highly effective training that teaches why a job needs to be carried out in a certain way, as opposed to simply being taught a process.
VR can simulate high-risk environments
Moving vehicles or trains, and working at height make it difficult and dangerous to train some workers on a real work site.
However, classroom training alone can lack a sense of realism such that learners don’t develop the increased level of hazard awareness needed to stay safe on site.
VR can provide a bridge between classroom and onsite training. For example:
- Trainee offshore wind turbine engineers can be trained in key aspects of repair and maintenance without having to go to the site. They can also remotely train in how to work safely at height and in the use of rescue equipment
- Workers in the construction industry can be trained to look out for vehicle movements, objects falling from height, trenches and excavations, as well as routine trip hazards, in a simulated environment
- Road construction and rail track maintenance workers can be trained to carry out their tasks whilst maintaining awareness of vehicle or train movements around them
VR can simulate difficult-to-access environments
If you need to train team members for a project based abroad, or where the working conditions could be risky, teaching them how to carry out that task in a virtual environment means they can build up their competence first, and then transfer those skills to the real environment.
VR can simulate training with expensive and bulky equipment
For example, heavy plants used in mining or construction can be simulated for use in induction, ongoing and refresher training.
Assessment Options
VR allows for a range of assessment options, especially useful for H&S training, allowing you to:
- Identify which of your employees have knowledge gaps
- Discover problems with your H&S processes – are everyone making the same mistakes?
- Target follow-up training resources at those who really need it
- Test processes before they are implemented in the field and anticipate and mitigate risks early
- Collect behavioural data and run analyses
VR Hire and Hardware Options
Meta Quest (or Oculus Quest) Hire
This is still the leader for easy, mobile VR training, they are excellent headsets allowing both 360 H&S video and also training in immersive VR environments.
Pico 4 Hire
An excellent alternative to the Meta Quest, a very lightweight design with the battery located at the back, making VR H&S training comfortable and convenient.
Hololens – when you want to train in real world environments
Hololens, from Microsoft, is a great addition to H&S training. It allows users to view additional instructions and guidance, overlaid onto the real world environment.
Hololens does not replace the users view, instead super imposing crucial information via augmented reality. This information offers support, guidance and instruction on key operations and processes.
Hololens also allows expert users to piggyback on their training session and support them in real-time on the job.
Apple Vision Pro Hire
This high resolution headset offers amazing visuals, bright and clear augmented experiences even in bright rooms and we expect this headset to gain significant traction in the H&S training sector as a result.
Additional Resources and Support from VRE
Health and Safety (H&S) Consultancy
Our team includes health and safety consultants with years of experience across many sectors. This background allows us to review all your existing H&S processes and paperwork, and provide additional consulting around the VR implementation to ensure you are compliant and operating according to best practice across the board.
Events
VRE can provide all the virtual reality hire and equipment you may need for any H&S training and our technical teams can cater to any size of health and safety training programmes at any location in the EU. Alternatively, we can also provide long-term VR hire and train your own teams in its use.
H&S Articles
As experts in VR and personality we are able to combine both in the development of VR training products. In the article below we explore how personality is implicated in the H&S sector and related work.