At VRAI, we believe that there are three megatrends driving the business world at the moment. The first comes from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to an accelerated adoption of digital ways of working. The second is the increasinging awareness of enterprises that they need to take responsibility and action to help mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis. The third is the increased awareness of our newest generation of workers regarding their need to do work that has meaning and purpose.
Addressing these megatrends is a recipe for a more profitable, a more sustainable and a fairer enterprise. We believe in creating shared value for our customers, investors, employees and community by adopting the triple bottom line. This means that our company focuses not only on profit, but also on people and the planet. Our company directors have a legal obligation to do this as it is enshrined in our company constitution through the B Corporation (B Corps) movement.
It is important to be straightforward about our approach to business. We want our customers, our employees and our investors to be aware of our focus on the triple bottom line as it will shape the decisions we make, and strategies we pursue.
Enterprise Ireland, Europe's most active VC seed investor and the 2nd most active VC seed investor globally, have now invested in VRAI recognising our B Corporation constitution and commitment to the B Corps ethos. This is an example that investors now value companies that not only seek profit, but also have a positive impact on people and the planet.
We want our customers, our employees and our investors to be aware of our focus on the triple bottom line as it will shape the decisions we make, and strategies we pursue
At the core of our triple bottom line is sustainability, but sustainability means different things in different contexts, ie; profit, people and planet.
Sustainability in a profit context means that we must solve customers' problems and exceed their expectations by delivering data driven virtual reality simulation solutions.
Sustainability in a planet context is what drove us to pursue B Corporation certification and informs business decisions such as focussing on supporting customers in the offshore wind industry instead of the offshore fossil fuel industry.
Sustainability in a people context means that we want to create a cognitively diverse work environment where our teams can flourish. Central to that is helping them to find a sustainable work-life balance through flexible, remote ways of doing purposeful work, enhancing our customers' employee safety and performance.
Last year, the Fortune 500 spent $100 billion on training and safety and yet the majority of those companies suffered a death or serious injury in the previous 18 months. So, why is that? The majority of companies are using traditional methods such as lectures to deliver training, even though we know that this is ineffective and inefficient.
For people who work in risky or remote operational environments, such as frontline medical personnel, offshore wind technicians, or military personnel, there is a need for remote simulation tools to train, prepare for and mitigate risk. The pandemic is making it increasingly difficult to conduct in-person training, this is making companies look at new remote ways to train their people.
Traditional digital training methods struggle to prepare someone to fix a blade on a 100m high wind turbine 100km offshore in the North Sea
Traditional remote training tools cannot prepare someone to climb a high-voltage electricity pylon in a storm, or fix a blade on a 100m high wind turbine 100km offshore in the North Sea, but immersive virtual reality training technologies can.
We have created HEAT to help solve our customers' challenges around providing authentic, memorable and measurable remote VR training for their people. HEAT combines authentic virtual training environments with cutting edge data capture and analytics capability. HEAT allows organisations whose activities are risky, remote or rare, to train in a more authentic, memorable and measurable way.
We are seeing outstanding results that are correlating with other independent reports on the efficacy of VR simulation training. It is leading to faster, more effective and engaged learning. It is also leading to efficiencies when done at scale.
VR training is a more effective, and cheaper, way to train people at scale as you need less instructors, less expensive equipment and less travel as VR training can be done remotely
VR training is a cheaper way to train people at scale as you need less instructors, less requirement for expensive equipment to be used for training as it can be done virtually instead, and less need for travel as VR training can be done remotely.
VRAI worked with IAG Cargo to build an employee onboarding experience in Heathrow Airport. IAG were able to improve their onboarding process with 94 per cent of users saying they learned something new, employees understanding of operations increased from an average of 5/10 to 8/10, and the average induction session length reduced from 90 to 15 minutes.
It is not only a financial saving that can be made by using VR training. If large employers adopt VR training as a way to train their people remotely, they can reduce the number of flights associated with training globally by 25 million a year, and reduce their carbon footprint by 2.5 Mega tonnes per year. That would equate to the CO2 footprint of about 150,000 UK households annually.
We believe that in order to flourish as a company, pursuing the triple bottom line simply makes sense. We are solving our customers' problems by providing a remote VR simulation training solution; we are helping our customers mitigate their impact on the environment, and we are giving our employees more than just a paycheck, we are giving them a way to have a positive impact on the world around them.
For more information visit vraisimulation.com