Human Resource (HR) managers are always looking for technology that can improve their employee productivity and communication, particularly ones that are impactful and easy to deploy. Virtual Reality (VR) checks both those boxes. Large organizations and agile startups alike are using VR for everything from hiring to training to employee communication.  

We’ve covered the impact of VR on a number of industries in this blog, including VR for Marketing/Sales, VR for Real Estate, VR for BIM. Nowhere is the impact as widely felt as in human resources though. There are so many different facets of human resources that can be energized and improved with smart uses of virtual reality.

Below, we’ll cover some of the top existing use cases for 360 media in human resources. As VR matures, and we’re sure to see this list expand. But in the meantime, regardless of what company you’re with, there’s sure to be a way to incorporate VR into your human resources workflow to positive benefit.

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1. HR Should Use VR for Hiring

Hiring top notch employees is the most important job function of HR. Really, it’s the most important job function in any company. Businesses thrive on having the best employees. And if you can’t convince the best employees to work for you, you are at a strategic disadvantage.

We live in a current economic climate where unemployment is relatively low. And traditional hiring approaches are being upended. Just over a decade ago, most MBA graduates wanted to work at the big name consulting and finance firms. They wanted the “safe” occupation with the guaranteed career path and big salary.

But the world has changed. Technology and society has made companies like Google, Amazon, and tech startups much more appealing to top graduates. According to Fortune, Millennials want a flexible workplace, interesting career development buoyed by non-traditional learning environments, and a workplace that cares about social causes and a sense of purpose.

How do you convey those workplace opportunities in an interesting and engaging manner to prospective employees? At employee fairs, how do you get people to your booth beyond handing out stress balls? Since Millennials crave experiences over things, what type of experiences resonate and become memorable?

The answer, obviously, is Virtual Reality.

Witness Toyota High Systems. They use our InstaVR platform to create engaging virtual campus tours that they showcase on HTC Vives at college hiring fairs. Not only are students enticed by the HTC Vive to try out VR, they’re given an in-depth 360 tour of all the great things happening at Toyota’s campus. This type of immersive experience sticks with the potential employee long after the job fair.

Not only can you distribute your VR using InstaVR in-person, you can publish to the iTunes Store or Google Play to reach a global audience.

InstaVR Tip: Use Hotspot overlays in your 360 media to bring particular attention to important facets of working at your company. For instance, Mimacom — in their Google Play distributed app, built using InstaVR — uses image based Hotspots to highlight important facts about their company and offices.

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2. Use VR for Onboarding New Employees

We covered this topic extensively in a guest post we wrote for Training Industry earlier this month. The basic facts around VR and new employee training are clear: VR is cost-effective, scale-able, and independent of geographic location. Using VR is a great way to both convey information and get new employees excited for their job. And it’s particularly well-suited for high stress or dangerous jobs.

One client of InstaVR works with a division of the US Federal government. With multiple regional offices throughout the country, distribution of a long-form 20+ minute VR training to these regional offices is simple and efficient. And employees get their first taste of what they’ll experience in the field through the VR training. This makes them feel more comfortable and acclimated once they really do go out to do their actual job.

You may also want to consider our new module, Guided VR Co-Viewing. It allows you to do real-time training in VR, and incorporates a level of interactivity unparalleled in packaged VR applications.

InstaVR Tip: Pick the right VR distribution method to match the employees you’ll be onboarding. If you have 100s or 1000s of new employees hired simultaneously, your best best is to create an iOS or Android app, and give your employees Google Cardboards on which to view your VR. If you’re onboarding less than 100 employees at a time to a location, it might be worthwhile to upgrade your VR training hardware to the Gear VR or Google Daydream headsets. And don’t forget about Guided VR Co-Viewing as an option, where appropriate.

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3. VR for Continual Employee Education and Communication

Let’s be honest — e-mail is an overused and less-than-ideal way to communicate with employees. It’s efficient and simple, but it also gets lost amid a sea of other emails. And it’s not dynamic or memorable.

Video is better. But still, watching a video on your computer is passive, and you can get easily distracted as the video plays.

VR is immersive, interactive, and memorable. It transports you into a world where your attention is 100% on the VR videos or images you’re seeing in your headset. It can also be really fun! So for either ongoing employee communication or one-off events, what better way to connect in a more impactful manner than with VR?

InstaVR Tip: For maximum engagement, make your VR interactive. For images, that might mean adding informative Hotspots or giving users a choice of where they navigate as their next scene. Or with video, add voiceover narration guiding the viewer on where they should look.

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Conclusion

Human Resources touches on a lot of different facets of the employee experience: hiring, training, and communication. (to name but three!) And Virtual Reality offers HR employees a new and exciting way to improve all those areas.

The great thing about VR/360 media is that it doesn’t require an incredibly significant amount of time or investment. All you really need is a 360 camera, a laptop, an internet connection, and an InstaVR Pro account. The most important thing is to utilize creativity to figure out how VR meets a need.

Do you have an upcoming appearance at a job fair and want a way to get more people to stop at your booth and have a memorable experience? Use InstaVR. Have multiple offices where you onboard new employees at the same time, and want a better way than having your corporate trainer sequentially visit them? Use InstaVR. Need a cool way to highlight new things at your company during your monthly All-Hands meeting? Use InstaVR.

Using InstaVR for Human Resources functions is a great corporate use case. If you’d like to discuss how you can incorporate VR into your department, reach out to our Head of Sales, Andrew Woodberry, andrew @ instavr.co or +1 925-708-3928.

We look forward to seeing all your great VR for HR applications!