VR Soft Skills Training (Remotely)

Are your learners tired of MS Teams? Mine were… thus we engaged and designed a VR Experience to uplift the engagement , providing Team bonding events, deliver a fun environment, something new that does not bore the learner and feel safe to practice skills we used to deliver in-person settings. Personally was excited to see the survey results delivered by VRE where the learners reported a higher engagement and practice to previous classes.

The free VR hire and technical set-up was smooth, which was critical for our Global learners not to lose interest in the experience.

Note to other Learning Leaders… give it a try and build an experience journey rather than a one time class so the learner feels comfortable with the goggles, platform and their avatar.

VRE worked with us to deliver a fantastic learning experience for our team members. Using VR, they enabled us to offer remote training which let our team feel as if they were together in the same place. We had so much positive feedback, including: “It was powerful learning, a great opportunity for feedback and really realistic.” I’m delighted with the transference of learning back into work, with participants seeing positive changes in their teams because of the new coaching skills they have learnt.

I think it’s so important that learning professionals understand the value of experiential learning in a digital environment and seek opportunities to enhance their development options with VR.

Stonegate partnered with Virtual Reality to deliver some very different, very engaging coaching and also mentoring sessions. The VR tool ensures the training is extremely immersive, varied and absorbing; the feedback from our attendees was 100% positive it felt like we had been together face to face all day’ which, in the times of pandemic, was very welcome feedback.

We particularly liked the video, whiteboard, ‘any size’ handouts, and the surroundings options.

VRE were brilliant to work with and happy to take suggestions on additional content or changes so that it worked for us.

We plan to use VR more in the future….we are already being asked ‘what next?!’

VRE provided us an amazing experience from two perspectives:
• Use of virtual reality for meetings and trainings with a lot of resources (post-its, blackboards, presentations) and avatars to improve nonverbal communication having an experience more similar to a presential meeting.
• As Head of Project Management Department, we´re providing a very useful and simple tool as GROW Model for project managers to use coaching techniques with their teams in order to achieve high performance and business results.

The day spent with VRE was a real treat. It was a novelty to experience the VR headsets and to feel like I was actually in the same room as my team mates (a particular treat when in the depths of lockdown). I was blown away by how ‘real’ it felt once wearing the headset. You are completely transported to another world.

It wasn’t just the new technology that made our session great, VRE structured our day in a way which allowed us to use the functionalities of the headset to really enhance our learning and understanding of the topic at hand. Using our virtual pens, picking items in our virtual room up with lasers and being able to break out into separate virtual rooms for periods of time, all proved to maintain our atiention in a way which is harder to achieve on a Teams call or even in person. I find myself regularly referring back to our topic for the day: the ‘GROW’ coaching model from which I retained a substantial amount of learning. I believe this was due to the way that Mark and his team utilised the virtual reality technology.

The session left me feeling motivated and excited that corporate learning is moving into a whole new (virtual) dimension. As a digital learning specialist, I found it particularly interesting to compare my overall experience to that of a session on a Teams call or an eLearning. The array of functionalities available on the headsets leaves huge room for creative design of training, something I feel the VRE team pulled off in a professional, fun, and effective way.

I was excited to experience virtual reality for the first time ever with VRE. As a management development trainer myself, I was intrigued to see how I and a group of our managers would react to a virtual programme, what would the experience be like? What would we gain and lose in comparison to a face-to-face or Teams Session? I have to say that I was delighted at how immersive the experience was, how ideal the environment was for learning, and how skilfully Mark made use of the virtual tools and different facilitation techniques. This was much closer to a face-to-face experience than I had imagined possible and I’m now confident about the potential for virtual learning. Coupled with this, the content of the session coaching skills for managers session was well pitched for a group of new managers, giving them helpful information and most importantly practice, which will help them with their day to day work and real life challenges. I’d easily recommend this session for others.

The virtual learning and development space is very exciting and has immense potential for skill building, human connections and building teams. When organising a Global Development Seminar for our early career rotational program members, we were looking for a partner who can support us in a number of countries globally with a meaningful offering. We partnered with VRE on coaching and soft skill training and team building activities. VRE was valuable partner on our journey to bring a memorable experience to our team: enhance coaching capabilities and a very contemporary way to enjoy connections. It was a unique first adventure and for sure not the last!