In the past few years, VR simulation technology has gained massive popularity and transformed the way businesses train their employees. In today’s competitive work environment, businesses are constantly searching for effective ways to improve the skills and knowledge of their workforce. While traditional methods of training are still in use, simulations have the potential to help employees reach their full potential.
While a majority of the jobs are on the verge of being replaced by AI, soft skills are crucial for individuals and organizations to thrive. While AI excels at technical tasks, soft skills like critical thinking, communication, and emotional intelligence are essential in making ethical considerations, navigating human interaction, and keeping up with evolving workplace culture. This is where simulation-based training can make an impact.
Using Simulations for Soft Skill Training
For decades, traditional soft skills training has been more or less the same. In order to stay relevant to current working standards and changing regulatory requirements, businesses need innovative training methods that address today’s workforce needs. A simulation based on the real-life experience of someone in a particular role can help deliver the best learning experience for the employees.
Simulations, which replicate the real-world scenarios in a virtual environment with the help of virtual reality technology, can engage your employees better and prepare them for the real-world challenges. In fact, simulation-based training programs require fewer in-person training sessions and lower training costs.
How Do Simulations Enhance Soft Skill Training Outcomes?
As mentioned, simulations can virtually transport an employee into a realistic scenario without needing to invest in fancy equipment or engage in unengaging in-person training. These simulations create an immersive experience for the employees where they can practice open-response solutions to real-world situations. This helps you improve your employees’ critical thinking and reasoning skills. Let’s take a look at all the major advantages of using simulations that can enhance soft-skills training outcomes:
Safe Learning Environment
Your employees, especially those who constantly interact with your clients, require proper soft skill training. Sending them to meet with clients or lead projects without the essential soft skills can be a huge gamble. Instead of finding out about their lack of soft skills from the client as a form of negative feedback, it is better to let the employees hone their skills in similar situations, but within a simulated environment.
Simulated training sessions allow your employees to immerse themselves in a lifelike situation where they can practice their soft skills without the fear of consequences. In such simulated environments, your employees can make mistakes and learn from them. They can also use the feedback from the training sessions to improve their skills every time they are put into similar situations. A safe learning environment will encourage them to learn more effectively.
Efficient Soft Skill Training
You must be aware of the fact that onboarding and ongoing training can take a significant amount of time. Training on technical skills, which are often referred to as hard skills, often takes weeks to complete. So, it becomes really difficult for organizations to assess and train employees on their soft skills. Not to forget, the in-person training sessions used in traditional soft skill training can be time-consuming.
Shifting to a simulation-based training program gives your employees the option to complete the training when they have free time. Also, the training can be replayed multiple times with no additional action from a trainer or manager. Unlike roleplay with an actor or a fellow team member during the training sessions, simulations usually have virtual humans for the learners to practice soft skills with whenever they want.
Greater Emotional Connection
Feeling emotionally engaged can be challenging for an employee while consuming training materials or practicing role-play with an actor. Even e-learning, which is a passive experience, does not require the learner to think on their feet or deeply engage. Simulations powered by VR technology can help your employees experience a new level of emotional engagement.
VR simulations cause people to experience real emotions as they engage with virtual human characters. This stronger emotional connection arises from the nature of immersive learning content as it presents learners with simulated situations that feel real. The virtual environments in the simulations match the scenarios. Also, the virtual characters’ speech and body language match that of real humans. As the learners feel real emotions, it allows them to practice what it will be like to have a real-life interaction when emotions are flowing.
Real-Time Feedback
Depending on the design of the training materials, your employees can receive feedback in several ways while going through an immersive soft skill learning module. In these learning models, the decisions that learners make within a simulation and the skills they showcase determine the feedback they receive. Real-time feedback is a flexible benefit of VR training that can take many forms. For example, it can be verbally delivered via a virtual human coach during the course or through user interface content that indicates whether learners have made the correct choices.
With such real-time feedback, your employees can gain a better understanding of what they are doing right and where they are falling short. In some cases, your employees may receive feedback along with specific examples to encourage improvement. Instead of simply looking back on a test and seeing a result, learners can address the issue right away. This, in turn, reinforces the learning experience, making skills more easily applied in a similar real-life situation.
Conclusion
There is no denying that simulations are the future of soft skill training. It is also arguably the most efficient way to improve the internal and client-facing processes in an organization. While VR technology makes it easier for businesses to set up simulated training programs, it is important that you understand how the simulations can help your employees in meeting their soft skill gaps. When you have clarity about the training goals and requirements, you can develop a training program that drives the desired outcomes.
