Walking into the VR World conference, you’re greeted by people pawing the air and stepping over invisible obstacles. Ten years ago, this may have felt surreal or futuristic, but today, it is simply the norm. VR is here, and companies are rapidly adopting it in innovative ways to improve their employee experience and expertise.

A stand out for internal training was a product by SkillReal. If anyone played the Microsoft 95 game 3D Movie Maker, it felt a lot like that, but with far more enhanced graphics and applicability for companies.  It offers a cost-effective and engaging way to deliver company announcements or trainings, without having to blow budget and time on a professional film or pushing reluctant managers to speak on camera. You can purchase the whole system for total control. Companies have the full ability to create avatars (yes in the spitting image of your CEO!) and the option of text to speech or to record someone delivering information. The characters can perform actions, detailed facial expressions and interact with the user. Company announcements can be created and recorded as a short film and distributed to employee computers, laptops or hand-held devices for an interactive way of communicating with employees that breaks through the noise.

Another interactive and effective way to train staff is through mixed reality. Holo-light have a case study where staff needed to get up to speed on using a piece of equipment quickly, because in order to train someone, the entire system had to be off. Not only did pre-training them away from the equipment properly prepare employees, another result was that they made fewer mistakes while using mixed reality as a guide and without the pressure of having their manager watching over them. Once trained, they could even use the mixed reality to give them prompts when they were using the real equipment.

It’s no longer a matter of early adoption, VR is here and it’s only going get be bigger and better. It is a valuable tool not only in training and internal comms, but also for early careers recruitment. Generation Z have high expectations of companies to be up-to-date with the latest tech, so it’s integral to capture the attention of students through immersive experiences on campus. There are so many ways in which to do this, but it’s imperative that any tech is incorporated in an authentic and relevant way that gives something to students; to peak their curiosity and encourage them to spend the time with you on your stand.