If you’re like me, you may be exhilarated by the possibilities inherent in augmented reality (AR) workplace training. Not only does AR open the doors for limitless creativity and innovation, it also enables enterprises to speed up the training process and make it more beneficial to employees. As someone who spends his life learning about what drives people to adopt new technologies, I see much potential in workplace AR, and predict that it will play a key role in offering companies a competitive advantage.
Discover The Most Recent Developments In Workplace AR
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, when businesses combine AR with the internet of things (IoT), something incredible happens. It sparks a business revolution unlike anything we’ve seen before—surpassing even the cell phone in how drastically it alters how industries operate. Think about it: AR is a virtual reality world in which anything is possible. You can take on-the-job training to a whole new level, putting the new hire in real-world situations in which they must perform their job duties. This kind of hyper-training provides hands-on experience without the costs and risks of real hands-on. It’s the best of both worlds.
AR unlocks the potential to put employees in situations that you otherwise could not recreate. For example, a surgeon could use AR to learn how to perform open-heart surgery—without risking the patient’s life. Books and surgical dummies have limitations that AR training does not. AR can also simulate hazardous workplace conditions an employee may face, such as a live wire falling to the ground in the construction industry. It can teach employees the proper protocol in such situations and prepare them for real-world scenarios in time to save lives.
In an ultra-fast business world that’s brimming with change, business agility and adaptability need an ally to help companies move forward with real-time training. When millions of new employees are trained using AR technologies, businesses will be more agile and able to adapt to new technologies. Think about how much easier adopting the cloud would have been if your employees could have experimented with the new equipment in an augmented reality workplace without consequence. Changing your communication model to empower your employees gives your company the power to incorporate new ideas and technologies without issues. AR makes this possible.
Recognize How Augmented Reality Can Help Your Business
Augmented reality blurs the line between the physical and digital realms. It brings computer-generated graphics to life, superimposing images on what the employee actually sees. The potential for AR as a powerful training tool is only as limited as your imagination, especially when you blend it with employee collaboration, field tests, and presentations. AR enables a level of creativity and efficiency in the training process that companies have yet to achieve:
- Save time and money.Old structures of email and training initiatives in silos take too long to execute and have poor employee engagement. Switching to AR drastically speeds up the training process, saving money and enabling employees to do the job faster (and better).
- Take on-the-job training and retraining to another level.It’s clear that AR gives business owners limitless potential for placing trainees in real-world scenarios and situations. Many employees learn best by doing rather than seeing. AR is a happy medium between reading about something in a book and doing the real thing.
- Supercharge your remote workforce.AR can take the remote workforce further than existing tools can. Think about it—you can immerse your remote team in a project your in-house team is working on, bringing employees together from across the globe in a way that feels more real than ever before.
- Improve productivity. Integrating new technology and giving impressive business intelligence to employees drastically improves productivity, collaboration, and execution. Giving your team the power of AR will boost overall job understanding and how you expect things to operate.
- Make personal connections.AR can connect the C-suite with employees in a way that’s more personal, thereby transforming and improving the overall employee experience.
- Gain an edge over the competition.With the power of AR on your side, you can train your team more quickly and efficiently than your competition can. Your workforce will be better at their jobs and more willing to adopt new technologies and practices, giving your company an industry advantage.
Hyper-training with augmented reality facilitates shorter learning curves, better-trained employees, and an all-around more efficient workplace. As soon as AR becomes widely available to enterprises for training purposes (and it will soon), I suggest you make room in your budget for this immensely beneficial new technology.
A version of this was first posted on Forbes.com
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