Image credit: Walmart VR training simulator for in-store associates
Following the ambitious VR-based employee training strategy disclosed last year,
Walmart announced late
September its roll-out plan for every US branch of its stores, totaling 4,700
locations.
In 2017, Walmart introduced VR to the world of employee training by
using the technology to upgrade training at Walmart Academies nationwide, as a
way to easily and efficiently prepare their managers and department heads for
the challenges of retail by placing them in stressful scenarios; most notably,
a nightmare-inducing Black Friday simulator.
With the huge success of that program and after one year utilizing VR
tech, the company is now providing Oculus Go virtual reality headsets to all
stores in the U.S. to bring the same level of training to more than 1 million
Walmart associates.
New technology, soft skills like empathy and customer service, and compliance
will form the three main areas of VR training for associates. The company
already has more than 45 training modules available through the standalone headsets.
Walmart leverages the STRIVR platform to create, manage, and deploy virtual
training on all aspects of store operations. It allows the company to monitor
who is using VR and how they have been using it, and also helps to analyze
behavior and common patterns that arise during training.
Walmart is embarking on one of the biggest expansions of VR training in
history, giving VR yet another defining moment. This massive expansion of
virtual training, combined with the company’s plans for virtual showrooms, as
well as its own VR headset and haptic gloves, only further cements Walmart as a
retailer committed to next generation shopping.
Here are the details from Walmart’s blog, dated September 20, 2018:
“Starting next month,
VR training will begin its launch across the country, sending four headsets to
every Walmart supercenter and two units to every Neighborhood Market and
discount store. With more than 17,000 Oculus Go headsets in stores by the end of the year,
every associate – including those on the floor who interact with customers the
most – will have access to the same training that their managers and department
managers do at the Academies.”
As stated by Bill
Myers, New Territory and Organizer of Cleveland & Akron VR Meetups
founder, “Walmart is placing an incredible vote of confidence for virtual
reality training technology in the workplace. At face value, VR technology
makes sense as a tool to practice soft-skills and help employees understand
what makes a great customer experience, but the side effects of this effort go
far beyond delivering a better brand experience (in the best possible way).”
In the article 3 Incredible Side Effects of Walmart’s New VR
Training Initiative, Myers explores the further implications of Training
Evangelists, Sharing Product Knowledge and Inspiring Innovation, anticipating
that “large-scale rollouts of virtual reality training simulations are just the
beginning of a wave of mass-adoption of immersive technology in the workplace.”
“As Walmart continues to provide engaging training experience, it is simultaneously
growing VR’s fan base, educating Walmart customers of the joys of this new
medium, and inevitably inspiring millions to engage with immersive technology
for the first time,” concludes Myers.
Image
credit: Walmart - A Walmart employee using an Oculus Go VR headset
Walmart VR-based
Training Retrospective
Walmart’s newest training tool got its start from an associate watching
the University of Arkansas football team practice. Brock McKeel, senior
director of central operations, saw how the athletes were interacting with the
virtual reality (VR) technology during practice, putting them in real-life
scenarios to test their skills and reactions. He talked with the team and one
of the coaches – all confirmed VR had helped them improve performance on the
field. After seeing the university’s success, Brock had an idea: this could
easily be applied to the Walmart Academy training for store associates.
Using the same technology as the football team, Walmart incorporated VR
into 30 academies and used it to train store associates to handle daily situations.
Ultimately, everything associates do is geared toward giving customers the best
experience. Through VR, associates can see how their actions affect that. It’s
helpful for associates to see mistakes in a virtual environment and know how to
deal with them before they experience it in real life and don’t know what to
do.
Because of the
promising results, Walmart rolled out this training to all its 200 Academy
facilities in 2017, helping educate the estimated 150,000 employees that go
through the program each year.
Image
credit: Walmart Academy
The program was developed by STRIVR, a
Palo Alto startup founded by Derek Belch. Derek developed his vision for STRIVR
while a graduate assistant coach at Stanford. After playing football for
Stanford, he attended business school at USC and then returned to Stanford to
get a Masters in Virtual Reality and to coach. This unique background gave
Derek insight into the opportunity of using VR to transform training, initially
for athletes but more broadly for business organizations.
Jeremy Bailenson, co-founder, is a professor at Stanford University and
is the founding director of Stanford’s world-renowned Virtual Human Interaction Lab. He is
one of the world’s leading experts in VR and his research focuses on VR’s
effect on the human brain and human behavior.
STRIVR has grown quickly, having worked with NFL players and
college football teams. Indeed, the partnership with Walmart came from the use
of VR at the University of Arkansas. In 2017, STRIVR was one of the very few
virtual reality companies with a decent revenue stream – above $10 million
according to TechCrunch. While they started out helping quarterbacks, they’ve
quickly moved into the corporate training sector. They offer virtual
experiences in customer service, operations, safety and security, diversity and
inclusion, and crisis management.
Initially, one of the biggest challenges for STRIVR and Walmart was
that high-end VR headsets like the Oculus Rift were expensive and
space-consuming. “So for now, VR is a small, supplemental part of Walmart
training,” said Belch at that point.
Walmart VR-based training expansion announced late September goes with
the much less expensive Oculus Go standalone VR headsets. Unlike Oculus’s other
headsets, Go doesn’t require a high-end smartphone, like the Samsung Gear VR,
or an expensive, high-powered computer, like the Oculus Rift. It has no wires
or cables like the Rift, either. With heavy focus on affordability and functionality,
Oculus Go is the virtual reality headset Facebook was hoping would bring VR to
the mainstream.
Easily
enter virtual reality with no PC or wires attached
Oculus Go is a standalone VR headset - you can
just take it out of the box and put it on.
Welcome
to Virtual Reality!
Derek Belch has talked many times about VR being a game changer in the
enterprise space and the transformational role it will play in the future of
training. This commitment from Walmart marks a milestone in that journey. As he
said in Walmart’s own announcement: “We are entering a new era of learning, and
Walmart continues to lead the way. The power of VR is real, and when offered as
a cornerstone of learning and development, it can truly transform the way an
organization trains its people.”