Abstract:

This study explores the potentialities of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in the educational and training field of work. VR and AR are innovative technologies with a recognised potential in several areas, with an increasing interest from the scientific community and with many proven benefits to facility Human Resources (HR) learning and development. The simulation and immersion features of VR and AR are two of the most important characteristics of these technologies. This paper presents an innovative exploratory study through the unexplored perspectives of HR professionals working in educational and training organisations on the potential of VR and AR technologies as facilitator tools to HR processes. To fill the gaps, we conducted two online focus groups, each group with four professionals in different educational and training organisations to analyse their conceptualisation about VR and AR, the experience with VR/AR technologies and the perspective about using VR and AR as HR processes supporting tools. Half of the participants revealed not to be familiar with these technologies since they admitted to having a superficial knowledge about the concepts, and only found VR as a useful training tool. The other half evidenced to have a wrong conceptualising about these technologies or did not know about it at all. Concerning the experience, only two professionals mentioned that they had already experienced VR, one of them on a training center visit and the other with gaming. After watching a video during the Focus Group sessions with some examples of applicability in HR (employer branding, recruitment and selection, onboarding, training, occupational health and organisational culture), participants identified and debated many potentialities for several HR processes such as training, recruitment and selection, onboarding and corporate culture. These professionals mentioned that, among the several HR activities, VR and AR usage has more potential use in staff training. They pointed out some benefits for using these technologies: practice in real contexts, learning improvement, increased motivation, relieve HR professionals to other tasks, and cost reduction. This study is pertinent for both literature and industry. For academics, it is an exploratory study about what people in the training activity know about VR and AR, innovative, but not so new technologies for increasing people competencies. HR professionals in educational or training organisations profit from the results of our analysis to understand how relevant using VR/AR tools could be to support their activity in HR and especially in learning and development.

Keywords:

Augmented reality, digital transformation, education, learning and development, training, virtual reality.