Virtual Reality Training Increases Employee Learning Retention

Bank of America’s announcement of their partnership with Bay Area-based virtual reality startup Strivr gives light to their stance of Virtual Reality training having a bigger presence in the workplace. The financial institution has already piloted the startup’s VR technology with about 400 employees. With Bank of America’s 50,000 client-facing employees, a wide-scale rollout would be required to scale its Virtual Reality training to deliver corporate learning.

Bank of America executive John Jordan has a plethora of ideas of areas to which they can implement VR technology successfully, and is willing to experiment in the early stages. It is noted that Bank of America has already developed VR technology for everything from notary services to fraud detection. Additionally, John has stated that they have the ambitious task to utilize VR technology to help employees practice empathy with customers.

Starting with a 400-employee pilot in 2019 gave Bank of America the opportunity to test the waters and see what practices worked best through VR training – and what didn’t. As the pilot progressed, it was clear that there were a lot of positives from giving managers and employees the opportunity to train and develop skills to have complex and nuanced conversations with their clients and each other. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, as 97% of Bank of America teammates cited more confidence and effectiveness in their jobs and greater retention of training material. Overall, employees learned material four times faster than they did in traditional classroom settings.

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