VR training makes employees biased

Want a way to interact with remote employees? Try virtual reality.

VR-assisted training seems to be up to date Black mirror An episode in life in a pandemic era. But according to Megan Kollar Dwyer, Director of Global Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Software Company ServiceNow, VR training can be an invisible but invaluable way to manage anti-bias education.

ServiceNow’s DIB strategy focuses on encouraging more “inclusive thinking” among company employees. From Kollar Dwyer’s perspective, the best way to facilitate this process is through immersive learning. The DIB team sends VR headsets to employees for training, and Praxis Labs, a ServiceNow partner, is designed for mobile use. This is intentional to combat Zoom fatigue and eliminate the burnout of staring at the laptop screen all day. (Kollar Dwyer does notice that some people are sick of VR, so there is an accessible web browser alternative.)

“We create opportunities to further develop inclusive thinking and skill sets, while also practicing in a space where you might say the wrong thing,” Kollar Dwyer told HR Dive, adding that no real person here would actually help. Learn from mistakes? valuable. Actively hurt colleagues? Not so much.

Prior to this, ServiceNow provided augmented reality training. The difference between AR training is that they depend on the employee’s position and the potential experience of that position, while VR training allows employees to assume multiple roles in a given scenario. For example, ServiceNow personnel managers will enter AR as a manager who handles harsh feedback from direct reports. In the VR training scenario outlined by Kollar Dwyer, employees play three different roles in the interview.

“This is in an interview environment where the candidate is being interviewed by an all-white interview panel of a company with a majority of white people, and the candidate is not white. And the candidate has experienced some prejudice incidents. This has led to a certain degree of high anxiety interviews. with [ultimately] Poor performance,” she explained. Regardless of their status, ServiceNow employees have experienced the bias of the experience of people of color through simulations, a white person on the recruitment team, and another white employee who witnessed this intense interview experience.

It is vital to immerse employees in multiple experiences. It contributes to diversity and inclusion training, which Kollar Dwyer calls “building empathy.”

Since implementing the VR training, the ServiceNow DIB team has received two sets of feedback. “‘Wow, I don’t fully understand how that might feel. I’ve always been the person who said this, and now I’m on the receiving end, and it’s landing for me.’ Getting an identity in virtual reality doesn’t mean you will suddenly Learn about someone’s life experience,” Kollar Dwyer said. “But it can be a bridge for deeper understanding.”

On the other hand, these VR trainings prompted some employees to express their regrets candidly. “We also received feedback from the participants very early, and they said,’Oh my God, I have been in this situation and I don’t know what to say… I’m a bystander. I stood by and said nothing, and Now you gave me a chance to do something different,'” Kollar Dwyer said.

She added that in this spirit, some learning content involves what employees can do if they miss the opportunity to express their opinions. The design team specially designed a scene to show the best practice of bystanders returning and connecting with victims of prejudice or micro-attack. There are also prompts that require employees to review their choices throughout the VR learning module and decide whether they will take a different approach.

In some respects, the mixed work environment is perfect for this new kind of bias training. Kollar Dwyer said that by eliminating the “fear of people’s judgments about saying the wrong thing,” or the harm caused by employees when they witness the prejudice of colleagues in their actions, holding these home study courses makes employees more relaxed.

“People are at home,” Kollar Dwyer added. “This is a safe space.”