Case Studies - Next World

Category: Case Studies

10th March 2022

How To Make Virtual Reality A Reality In The Workplace

As workforces across the globe continue to evolve and adopt new ways of working, virtual reality (VR) has become a simple solution to complex organisational safety challenges. When it comes to finding the right tools for your business, it is not a one size fits all approach – and the same is true for VR.

Many leading companies are employing immersive learning technologies to train and upskill their staff in line with a shift towards more effective workplace training. Whether this be for diversity and inclusion training or learning how to safely operate a forklift, every industry can glean from the benefits of VR.

What modules are on the market?

Next World Enterprises offer a variety of modules catering to a diverse range of operations including hazard identification, working at heights, office hazards, fire extinguisher skills, working around forklifts, forklift inspection, manual handling, confined spaces, fire hazards, and more. Depending on the size of your company and the internal pain points, you may also choose to pursue the development of bespoke modules tailored to your specific needs.

Next World’s Learning Experience Library

VR is being used more and more to nurture soft and hard skills, equipping team members with the confidence to effectively lead teams, project manage and navigate high pressure scenarios, particularly for organisations in the high-risk setting. With the ability to superimpose dangerous work instances and crisis situations, immersive learning training instils a greater sense of situational awareness and promotes proactive decision making.

Komatsu Australia,

Real Time Client Snapshot

Global manufacturer and distributor of earthmoving and mining equipment, Komatsu Australia, recently called upon Next World as the conglomerate celebrated 100-years and promised to create value where people and business thrive together.

Looking to the next 100 years, Komatsu turned to Next World’s innovative virtual reality technology to train and upskill their RTOs in line with the global movement towards more effective technology, as they drive towards their goal of zero harm.

Originally established in 1921 in Komatsu City, Japan, to sustain the surrounding community after the closure of a nearby copper mine, Komatsu has spent the past century dedicated to its founding principles of quality first, technology and manufacturing innovation, global reach and people development.

Commissioning Next World to deliver virtual reality training platforms and headsets to help induct new apprentices, Komatsu turned to Next World’s innovative technology to support training delivery – allowing high-risk industry workers to experience a situation and learn about the potential dangers, before returning home safely to their family.

Komatsu apprentices in VR Training

What are the benefits?

Research tells us that people’s attention spans are shrinking. In a world of information overload, the need for meaningful, highly relevant, and engaging content is essential to effectively enhance learning outcomes.

As expectations around the delivery of information and content quality continue to elevate, traditional and outdated styles of learning, such as standalone old-school quizzes and PowerPoints, are yielding lower knowledge-retention and failing to safeguard employees in high-risk industries.

This is where the VR advantage comes into play, offering an innovative method to hold the attention of employees with engaging training that makes a mark and supports staff regardless of their geographic location. Moreso, the data provided to employers allows for highly strategic decision making by defining areas where greater mentorship, guidance and skill is needed. These insights can significantly reduce a company’s risk profile.

The bottom line

Despite the initial outlay, VR training programs have an extremely high return on investment. There are innumerable benefits to be experienced at all levels of business.

Workers’ compensation: Increased learning outcomes enhance safety awareness which ultimately reduces the number of accidents. In turn, this significantly impacts savings by reducing and preventing harm.
Employee attraction and retention: VR is the sign of an innovative business, a value which attracts forward thinking talent. In addition, the reduced onboarding costs and strengthened retention prospects are a huge plus.
Employee productivity: It is proven that VR increases productivity by at least 20 per cent, particularly due to the reduction of re-work costs.
Brand value: A company’s brand image is a crucial component to hooking new clients. By placing innovation and technology at the forefront, VR can help a business stand ahead of competitors.
L&D Efficiency and Effect: With a 60% increase in productivity, 45% reduction in logistics costs and 20% improvement in assessment scores – VR lowers hidden costs and increases overall profitability across the business.

Overall, for a business of 1,000 employees, it is estimated that Next World’s VR training can see a yearly ROI of $697,620. Compounding this ROI over time can set a business up to move from strength to strength.

Click here for more information on ROI and Next World Enterprises’ pricing options.

11th August 2020

The Future. Working at heights VR training.

Did you know that 11% of workplace deaths are related to falls at heights? Making it the second leading cause of unintentional death.

Virtual Reality (VR) training is quickly becoming a trend for high-risk industries, such as construction and manufacturing. Studies show that Virtual Reality can increase engagement and retention levels, compared to traditional forms of training.

Having your employee take in the knowledge is incredibly important when working with high-risk situations such as working from heights.
With VR, employees can immerse themselves with a modern form of education, where they can learn and practice important skills from the comfort of their chair, and this includes working from heights.

The 3D-generated images create a simulated environment that makes the user feel like they are there, however it is completely risk-free.Other than higher engagement and retention rates, VR Training is proven to be a cost-effective method, due to the reduction of travel expenses for employees, as well as staff wages and insurances.

Virtual Reality will give employees the ability to train anytime, anywhere.
Falls are a well-recognised safety hazard and are among the biggest killers of workers. The death is a tragic reminder that WorkSafe will not hesitate to prosecute any employer who fails to do all they can to protect their workers’ health and safety.

An example of negligenceâ€¦

In 2017 an incident involving a 68-year-old Carpenter ended in tragedy after the company he worked for failed to ensure that persons other than employees were not exposed to risks to their health and safety, resulting with the man falling 3.1 metres, landing on a concrete slab, and sadly dying from head injuries on the scene.

The Carpenter was scouted for work via a Gumtree advertisement, and it was revealed that workers including the 68-year old man were not provided with a safe work method statement (SWMS) before commencing the high-risk construction work. The Residential Construction Company was fined $850,000 after they pleaded guilty to negligence.

The Solution.

Training employees in a dangerous situation is a thing of the past, but it is important to ensure they are trained. Our working from heights VR experience will give your employee the chance to conduct work from inside an elevated work platform.

The experience will also provide training in hazard detection and equipment inspection before the employee can begin work and makes the training feel more like a game with the ability to earn points based on correct answers.
Companies are already implementing VR as a tool for training in dangerous situations, VR provides a realistic, safe training environment for employees.

Next World Enterprises is giving you the chance to trial the Working From Heights experience, as well as our Site Inductions, Confined Space, Excavator Safety, and Manual Handling experiences. Contact us today to book your FREE 30-day trial, and join us in the future of training and induction.

2nd March 2020

10 Ways VR is Being Utilised for Learning

A common argument made about the use of VR in learning is that the applications for it are limited. If you’ve been following Next World on LinkedIn and Facebook recently, then you’ll have noticed we’ve been providing some examples that counter that argument.

Just in case you missed them, here’s a list of 10 different ways that VR is being utilised for learning across a variety of business settings.

#1 Empathy Building

Empathy is an important skill to have in the healthcare industry and Embodied Labs uses VR to help it’s clients train their employees in this important skill. Trainees don a VR headset and put themselves in the shoes of a patient with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and more.

The goal is to build empathy in the participants and existing neurological research backs up the effectiveness of this form of training, as it stimulates a user’s sensory receptors, which in turn creates new neural pathways in the user.

Read the full article we posted on this here.

#2 Disciplinary and Termination

Letting an employee go is a difficult process. Be too blunt or make other missteps in the process, and you can be left with an employee causing a scene in the office.

Barry is a fictional human being inside a VR experience who’s sole purpose is to be fired over and over again. He’s just one of the many VR characters that have been created by Talespin, a company that offers a variety of VR experiences that help teach ‘soft’ management skills such as how to fire an employee.

Check out the full article we posted here.

#3 Surgery & Medicine

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) teamed up with Osso VR this year to distribute up to 200 Oculus Quest headsets throughout the U.S. to train surgeons through VR simulations of various operations.

VR has shown plenty of promise already in the medical industry, J&J has just decided to be the innovators in the space and make themselves the first to push this technology out into the industry.

Read about J&J’s full plans here.

#4 HR & Organisational Culture

Having a culture education strategy will always pose a challenge of time. How can off-task time be reduced without dampening the educational impact? VR holds a solution, with standardised delivery, coupled with the creation of a personalised experience.

With the hardware and software becoming more affordable than it ever has been, VR is opening doors in this space as well.

Get all the details on how VR will be improving HR & Organisational Culture here.

#5 Discrimination

MIT noticed a lack of diversity in the types of people represented in VR experiences and created an experience which captures how participants perceive race, looking to see what sort of biases they have been taught in their upbringing.

The experience puts the user in the shoes of a young African-American girl, whose teacher has accused her of plagiarism despite having clearly completed the task on her own talents. Participants can navigate the discriminative scenario and the experience will analyse the responses to determine how the participant has been socialised to think about ethnicity.

Check out the full story behind this experience here.

#6 Pregnancy

Labour pains aren’t an enjoyable experience by any stretch of the imagination, but VR has found a way to help with this too.

Cedars Sinai hospital in California used immersive VR experiences of relaxing scenarios (e.g. a walk on the beach) with pregnant women, who found that they felt a reduction in their labour pains thanks to the experience.

Check out the full article here.

#7 Sport

Concussions are a big concern in any contact sport, especially when younger players are involved, those that could still be developing into the older years of their life.

TeachAids and Stanford University teamed up and created CrashCourse VR – a free app for the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest which teaches young athletes about concussions and what can be done to treat a concussion when it occurs.

See the full story on how football is being made safer here.

#8 Emergency Preparedness

Emergency response personnel are typically trained through scripted simulations of events from the past. These have turned out to be not only an ineffective means of training but an expensive one as well.

With VR on the rise, agencies gain access to a number of varied and unique training scenarios, which lets personnel better prepare for emergency situations, where just about anything can happen.

The content is already being used in Austin, Texas, where the University of Texas is working together with Austin-Travis County EMS, developing a VR experience that will better prepare medics.

Read the full article we posted about this here.

#9 Retail

Retailers have quickly picked up on the benefits of VR, both from a learning perspective and from a consumer perspective.

Walmart now uses Oculus Go headsets, incorporating Virtual Reality experiences into their staff training, using it to help them find suitable candidates for management positions in stores.

The company has even stated that they are seeing better results from those using the VR content in their training, citing a 10% to 15% improvement in test scores.

On the consumer side, Toms has been using VR with its customers, letting them experience their Virtual Giving Trip so they can see how their purchase is impacting the world.

#10 Safety & Compliance

VR is an excellent tool for training people for high-risk situations where the consequences can be extremely severe, even fatal in some instances.

UPS has been placing their drivers into VR simulations since 2017, with other companies starting to jump on the train to add immersive VR learning experiences to their training methods.

Read the full article we posted on this here.

These are just a few examples of what can be done with the power of VR. Here at Next World Enterprises, we’re looking to further the use of this technology in safety and induction spaces and make the content more affordable for business than ever.

We’ve already partnered with Harness, bringing our high-quality, immersive and gamified VR experiences into their accredited training courses with fantastic results.

If you’re interested in seeing more of what we do here and want to get on the VR train, contact us here.

28th February 2020

Harnessing VR to Enrich Accredited Training

Training Organisations, hungry for improvement, are turning more and more to the power of Virtual Reality (VR). They are turning to VR for a variety of reasons, but most notably because of its link to immersion, which is associated with learning by doing (Source: National Training Labs – USA). Immersive training environments are well known to achieve greater knowledge retention rates when compared to conventional alternatives. This has been evidenced in a variety of recent studies including that published by Consulting authority Deloitte that found a remarkable array of benefits from using VR in training.

Benefits included:

10-20% gains in labour productivity;
30% increase in assembly time;
Up to 10% reduction in error rates
Up to 20% decrease in re-work rates; and
70% increase in knowledge retention rates overall.

VR Benefits — VR scores a retention rate of 75% when compared to other learning methods on The Learning Pyramid
Source: The Peak Performance Center

Conventionally, training organisations have utilised audiovisual delivery methods, with lower retention rates, as the lead component of their accredited training programs, which is often followed by a demonstration. VR is adding another, richer layer that is furthering the effectiveness of accredited training.

â€œIt’s great to be able to engage with progressive-minded training organisations looking to optimise learning outcomesâ€ (Michael Oâ€™Reilly – Founder of Next World, a Virtual Reality safety training content development company). “Harness is a significant player in the safety training space, particularly in Qld and PNG, and having them on board with us has helped both of us to satisfy our purpose of helping to make people safer and more productive,â€ said Mr Oâ€™Reilly.

“Safety is our number one priority at Harness. The ability to reduce error rates up to 10% by utilising VR in our industry will have a remarkable impact on the lives of our people and our clients, by preventing fatalities and injuries as well as minimising downtime and reducing associated costs”. Said Vanessa Bajrovic (Acting CEO of Harness Group).

In the highly competitive landscape of business, searching for an edge can mean the difference between success and failure. An edge certainly exists through the use of VR.

Harness is one of the first RTOs to incorporate VR as part of their accredited training programs.

Harness is a leading provider of accredited training to nearly 10,000 people every year in Australia and is focussed on social responsibility and safety. This partnership currently spans a suite of safety training delivered through the use of Facebook’s Oculus Go and Quest technology programs. Content is currently being delivered in the following areas: