When it comes to your health and safety program, prioritizing innovation and change in order to keep your employees motived and engaged is extremely important.
Keeping an eye out for up and coming trends in safety training can be extremely helpful, and the latest one utilizes advances in gaming technology!
According to a study conducted in 2018, the most effective training method entails trainees physically interacting with the trainers, or those performing the actual job, in order to learn. This includes shadowing or real-life demonstrations.
Companies are starting to discover the value in incorporating augmented reality and virtual reality into safety training in order to enhance the learning process, help employees truly envision the consequences of not following safety rules and regulations, and enhance efficiency whilst reducing costs.
The Franklin Institute defines augmented reality (AR) as the process of “add[ing] digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go”. On the other hand, virtual reality (VR) “implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world”.
You may be asking – how can these technologies actually help improve my safety program and enhance the learning experience I provide to my trainees?
Here are a few advantages of incorporating AR and VR into your employee safety training program.
Accommodating Different Learning Styles
Every one of your trainees will have different learning preferences whether that be visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic, even a mix of those. These preferences are not usually accommodated in most safety training sessions. Introducing AR and VR into your training will allow for better comprehension from your visual and kinesthetic learners, even auditory learners as well. As we all know, proper training prevents accidents and saves lives.
Demonstrating and Experimenting Safely and Effectively
Learning in a virtual environment can allow for experimentation and simulation of real-life scenarios, but safely. Mistakes on the job can result in life-threatening and costly consequences and your trainees need to truly understand that. AR and VR will allow you to simulate realistic accidents or scenarios that could happen on the job, except without the dangers or cost.
Cost and Time Efficiency
Having your safety training conducted through a virtual environment means that you can run your sessions with as little or as many trainees as you’d like without paying for a live instructor. This also means that you save on travel expenses since training sessions can be conducted from anywhere without having your trainees meet at a specific location - saving you both time and money.
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On-Site Training and Learning
Micro-learning is important when it comes to refreshers or delivering how-to information whilst on the job. Micro-learning using AR allows for an incredible learning experience when it comes to instantly accessing step-by-step instructions and information about safety procedures, equipment operation, safety data, maintenance procedures, assembly, etc. Incorporating such in-depth technologies to assist your workers in real-time will ultimately increase productivity by providing necessary guidance as well as reduce the risk of accidents and damages.
Workhub provides a complete health and safety compliance software that allows easy management of training, procedures, policies, inspections, and more, centralized in one easy-to-use hub.
Hand crafted by the internal blog writing team at Workhub.
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