Training in VR - #Consequence Theatre
With some industries and worksites, the problem is not training but compliance and worksite culture in general. This is especially true of male dominated industrial workplaces where complacency is shrugged off as 'She'll Be Right'.
Going well beyond simply reinforcing safety rules, VR allows a workplace to create behavioural change by walking workers through a first person experience of the long term consequences of an incident, long after the sirens have disappeared. The emotional intesity of an experience is a key predictor of habit change.
Scenario Exposure
VR can put a worker as an unseen observer as an injured worker stuggles through the rehabilitation process and the administrative and financial burden of a accident. This could be a variety of locations. VR removes the requirement of any worker to have to project forward and imagine this situation - for a short time, they are actually immersed in it.
Emotional recall
VR can break the hold of a toxic non-compliance culture by directly appealing to the sensibilities and the emotion of each worker, separately.
Every worker leaves the headset with a vicariously lived experience of the difficulty of an injured worker and their family.
Discomfort NOT Trauma
Its important to make a clear distinction and add a caveat. Anyone who had experienced trauma from a previous injury would be vetted from this exposure. However, for a previously complacent work group to be persuaded to alter their collective actions, a degree of discomfort is absolutely necessary, in order to recruit emotions in the quest for culture change.