All employers have a legal obligation to ensure that all employees receive Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Fire Protection (FP) training. This type of training is generally intended to reduce the risks that an employee may come into contact with in the workplace.
H&S training is required by law when:
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a new employee starts work
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the employee changes position within the company
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the company changes the employee’s job classification
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a change in company (production, logistics) procedures
In addition to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, employees must also comply with one more statutory training and that is fire protection (PPE). This law for change urges companies to prepare their employees for crisis situations in case of fire and to ensure fire protection at the workplace.
Benefits of using VR for H&S training
If you ask employees how they perceive OSH and OHS training, I dare say that in most cases they will answer „Again?“. They simply take it as something they don’t enjoy and know it almost by heart. There is hardly any innovation in H&S training in companies, but virtual reality can change that!
„VR has the quality of immersing you in a different world so you are able to believe in the virtual reality around you and become totally immersed in it. In this way, the trainees really experience virtual reality!“
With virtual reality, we can also give employees things that are difficult to do in the normal course of business, such as:
- they get to know the exact procedure in the event of a health and safety emergency
- learning about the tools and possibilities of using the workplace
- training in critical situations
- practicing „fighting fire“ in fire protection
These workplace safety and fire protection opportunities in virtual reality are the closest to the imaginary pinnacle of training for crisis-type situations.
Thanks to virtual reality, you can actually experience the training
Due to the nature of OSH training, the training is always related to the employees of the company and their daily work. Examples might be working with professional heavy equipment, lasers, aerospace or automotive parts, or in the plastics industry. Although all these professions differ in principle, they all have a common denominator precisely in the fact that they have to carry out OSH. In virtual reality, we can therefore create a very specific situation for a given company, tailored to the company, where employees can be carefully trained on OSH and the specific risks that employees face in the workplace.
A huge advantage of using virtual reality is the involvement of all the senses. The participant has visual, auditory, verbal and motor perception throughout the training and the effectiveness increases rapidly. It is the ability to simulate critical situations or even common processes in VR that allows a company to train its employees continuously without having to interrupt company operations or pay large sums for repeated training. If you think that the use of VR for H&S training is a question of the future, it is not. It is the present and with us you can see for yourself.
Interactivity as a tool for real training with greater efficiency
A company that decides to train its employees on H&S in VR will definitely want an overlay in the form of interactive elements, where employees can interact with objects in virtual reality and actually manipulate them. Such training is then completely credible and employees are very effective when it comes to a similar situation in a real-life situation. Interactivity in VR allows you to take a fire extinguisher and actually try your hand at putting out a fire. A thing that you simply and easily cannot simulate in a real environment.
For example, in OHS training, interactivity allows you to learn about specialized machinery that employees come into contact with on a daily basis without having to interrupt production. Training that is designed in this way will serve the company for several years and can even be slightly modified if the production line or workplace is modified. VR training also gives employees something extra and that is emotion and experience. HSE training no longer has to fall under the „boring“ annual training.
H&S training in VR is a hot topic
Companies are realizing how virtual reality can save them money, make previously impossible critical situations accessible and, above all, make training of new and existing employees more efficient. If you are interested in virtual reality H&S training in your company, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact form. We will be happy to discuss with you possible scenarios for H&S training in VR. Training can be very comprehensively tailored and interactive, but also effective and affordable in the form of professional VR video production.
