Stanwell Energy VR: A personal testimonial from a Workforce Training Specialist
What are our clients saying?
We sat down with Workforce Training Specialist Michael Harris to get some feedback on the Virtual Reality training simulations we recently deployed for Stanwell Corporation Limited and this is what he had to say.
Transcript:
Michael
Everyone from our new graduates to our board members have have undertaken our simulations and everyone's got something out of it. Everyone's talking about how great they are, but they're also remembering the key messaging behind everything that we're trying to get across.
Ben
Stanwell had contacted us originally to try a pilot program to see if VR could work for them. It was pretty broad in its scope of the sorts of things that they wanted to cover off, because hazards can be physical, but they can also be psychological. And so to be able to take quite a long list of scenarios and synthesize that into something that was coherent, engaging, and that made sense to staff as they work through it, was quite a challenge.
Michael
The virtual reality project enabled us to take high risk and dangerous environments that were able to use repetitively, take people on a journey. And I think one of the the greatest things we achieved with it was the telling of really good stories. We were able to deliver training in a different way and engage with an audience in a way they weren't expecting in the past.
Ben
Anything that was in a textbook or on a screen. There are many layers of abstraction between what the user is learning and what they will actually do when they get to site with virtual reality. You can get as granular as you want, whether it's teaching somebody which order to remove the bolts in or confronting them with an abusive coworker and load that learning into their muscle memory so that when they do get to site, it's like they've done it before.
Michael
So the simulations, the VR experience is a way of taking that theory, putting it into a practical and then discussing the outcome of that, of that process afterwards. What we're finding with that is the engagement has lifted, especially with our junior team members. And they're understanding the process because they're putting them into practice. One thing that's been amazing with composite is their understanding of storytelling, and it's giving great value to the VR far beyond just doing an assessment or currency based kind of simulation.
Ben
So one of the biggest advantages for us as VR designers, by using something like hand tracking for the users to be able to interact with the world, is that we can set up scenarios where they have to really think on their feet and make decisions in the moment that can produce a set of branching outcomes.
Michael
One thing that I personally enjoy is the puzzles, and the way we're looking at the processes that we're teaching about. Having that depth to the process, making the challenges the right difficulty level. So they're not a simple here's a hazard. You know, I've identified that it's about controlling that hazard and making the person feel in control of the simulation, that their actions have an effect.
Michael
And also building in some of those we call master eggs, those pieces of information that can go a few different ways. That we often stop the simulation and talk to people about. Ever on from our new graduates to our board members have have undertaken our simulations and everyone's got something out of it. Everyone's talking about how great they are, but they're also remembering the key messaging behind everything that we're trying to get across.
Ben
Probably the biggest factor for success for any sort of virtual reality training is the people who are there to deploy it, and that's somewhere that we've been really lucky in that Michael and his team at Stanwell, they've been extremely thorough, not only in tracking what their users are learning, but also in gathering feedback from their staff in a really structured way that helps us tremendously.
Michael
Some of the things that surprised us with the virtual reality is how well the workforce receives the VR. They're able to adapt to the technology, and how much of our workforce actually understood and had used that technology previously. So it's much more commonplace than we thought it was going to be, and it was far more accepted all the way through from our new starters to our, you know, 30 year, team members who've been here forever from that.
The thing that really came out of it that was hugely beneficial to our organization, it starts the conversation about our hazard identification and our systems and processes that we then build off as trainers, as part of our workshops. Overall, the process was amazing. Working with Ben and the composite team were really surprised at how well they took on our objective, our mission, and who we are as an organization and were able to translate that into the simulations so that we didn't have to go through multiple review processes.
It was just it felt like it was always meant to be. We also got a lot more out of the simulations. The right questions were asked so that the simulations really represented who we are and what we needed them to achieve. The storytelling is absolutely critical, and it's really made it a fantastic and engaging and promising experience for us.
Ben
One of the things I've come to appreciate the most about, Michael and Amy and the team at Stanwell is that they've been doing this for a long time. They can smell a furphy when they hear one. And, they don't like to be talked into something that they know they don't want.
Michael
They listen, we understand each other and we're able to work towards a common goal. And it's been an absolute pleasure. So I hope to work with them far into the future.