Using virtual reality for immersive learning

Using virtual reality for immersive learning with Matt Burns, Host of the Global HR Summit

From the Talent Development Virtual Summit on HR Technology and Virtual Reality

I’m excited that you are joining me. As you may know or may have heard, I am planning, organizing, and hosting the first-ever Talent Development Virtual Summit coming up on September 14th through the 18th of 2020. I hope you’ll be a part of it. It is free to register, go to TalentDevelopmentVirtualSummit.com. We have 30 expert speakers talking about a lot of different topics around talent development, things like how to assess and get executive buy-in, how to build a great culture of engagement in a virtual world, how to enable our employees to own their careers, how to create great virtual programs, and how to weave DEI throughout.

We know many of you care a lot about technology, so I’m doing something special. I’m taking one of my interviews for the Summit with my friend, Matt Burns, who is an HR technology expert and a virtual reality expert. He’s also the host of the upcoming Global HR Summit, which is happening the week before mine. That’s coming up on September 8th of 2020. I am publishing that interview here so you can, number one, learn about everything going on the HR technology especially about virtual reality. Number two, if this piques your interest, then I suggest you go right away and register for Matt’s Global HR Summit, go to GlobalHRSummit.com and check that out. Number three, give you a taste of some of the session that is going to be inside the Talent Development Virtual Summit where we’ve got 30 expert speakers across the board. Matt is one of them.

We’ve got pre-recorded interviews for all of them so when you register, you’ll be able to watch that on-demand that week. You don’t have to be present for the entire week. You can pop-in and watch some of those at your leisure. If you upgrade to our VIP ticket, you’ll have lifetime access to those videos. You can go back and watch them whenever you want to. You don’t have to watch them that day or that week. Matt is an expert on everything HR technology and virtual reality. He hosts his own podcast and the host of Global HR Summit. Check this out if you are into technology especially virtual reality. If you’re interested to learn more about VR, go to GlobalHRSummit.com and register. That’s coming up September 8th through 10th of 2020 and the Talent Development Virtual Summit is the following week, September 14th through 18th 2020, TalentDevelopmentVirtualSummit.com. Here is my interview with Matt about HR technology and virtual reality. Enjoy.

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Are you ready to learn about the latest virtual learning and HR technology trends, looking for new and innovative ways to engage your people in a virtual world? You’re in the right place because I have a great interview and session for you. I'm excited to introduce you to our fantastic guest. Matt Burns is the Founder of BentoHR and the Global HR Summit. He's an immersive work experience architect, the host of the Thinking Inside The Box Podcast and Cofounder and Head of Learning Experience at Hacking HR. Matt has won awards for the HR Team of the Year, Most Innovative Use of HR technology, and is an expert on using innovative platforms like VR, AR and XR for learning. If you think this summit is cool, Matt ran his own Global HR Summit in 3D virtual reality, which I can't wait to hear more about. Matt, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.

I’m happy to be here, Andy.

It’s good to have you on. We've been connected for a while now and I've been watching all the amazing things that you have been doing. I know you know a lot about digital transformations and of course, all of the learning technologies, things that are going on. A lot of these things were nice to have. Some of the coolest, most progressive companies were doing them over the last couple of years but since COVID we're in this virtual world, everybody needs to figure out how do we develop our people virtually? How have you seen the learning landscape change since COVID hit in March 2020?

You hit the nail on the head, which is a lot of these challenges around scaling learning and finding technology solutions for some of the challenges around remote work or dispersed workforces, it -pre-dated COVID-19. However, COVID-19 has been a giant accelerant around these challenges as a more of a percentage of the workforce has now had to shift into a minimum space that oscillates between the virtual and the physical or in some cases, they'll be virtual for an indefinite period of time. What I'm seeing is more organizations tackle inertia and be more open to different kinds of technologies to solve the issues that we're talking about, whether that is using virtual reality or even simply being more thoughtful about how you combine digital with in-person learning experiences, instruction, course development and trying to equip employees and their leaders with more tools so they can take on self-directed learning in service to closing skill gaps, building competencies or addressing some real strategic issues.

The Challenge Of VR Adoption

We think about this big shift. There were progressive cool companies that were already doing a lot of digital stuff but there were a lot of companies that were doing almost nothing. Overnight, everybody is being asked or trying to figure out how to leverage technology to develop people virtually, engage people virtually, and all of them have to leverage different types of technology. What are some of the biggest challenges and roadblocks that have been getting in the way for organizations trying to do that?

Virtual reality creates an immersive experience for the learner that cannot be achieved through the top-down, instructor-centered model. Click To Tweet

I still think it's inertia for the majority of people. Let me be clear, Andy, I want to state my limitations. I wasn't a virtual reality advocate until early 2020. I was looking at digital transformation in the context of systems procurement, systems integrations, data, dashboarding and analytics. That to me is where my mind was at. My experience mostly working with large organizations is that they have a lot of tools, but they're not leveraging or haven't leveraged it appropriately over the course of the time that they've had it that they're focused on the wrong activities.

As we go forward, there's now a greater appreciation that we have to do things differently the traditional methods of instruction. If you know anyone in this audience or yourself that learns best by PowerPoint slides and lectures, please introduce them to me. I don't know that person. Most of us learn through simulations, tactile learning, group-based collaboration, discussion. Most of the educational programs, whether it's university programs or corporate learning, leverage to the traditional methods of instruction, which is top-down and instructor-centric and not learner-centric. Virtual reality, for example, is the complete opposite of that. It creates an immersive experience for the learner where we can build custom simulations that exposes them to scenarios, activities, responsibilities or experiences that they could be leveraging to enhance their knowledge, to build their toolbox and to build out their toolkit more broadly.

Let me give you a couple of different examples. The perception is that these innovative leading-edge companies, they're the ones doing this. That's not entirely true. I don't want to disparage these organizations but here are some well-known organizations now that are using virtual reality. KFC is teaching employees how to dip fry chicken with virtual reality. The reason is they've determined that the path to productivity, the adoption and the integration of knowledge happen more quickly because the science supports this when you're using immersive technologies. The consequence of that is they spend less time training employees and retraining employees, they don't need to have a trainer present with the employee, and when they joined the workforce, they experience less time loss injury, less knowledge leak and they're more productive more quickly, which is a win for everybody involved. The employee gets an immersive cool, integrated experience. KFC saves them money. Employees get less hurt. It's a win for everybody. That's one example.

Another example is Hilton, the hotel chain. They've been teaching housekeeping staff how to be empathetic to guests by simulating interactions with guests who may have complaints, concerns or observations about the property or their work. They put them through these simulations that are dynamic and it teaches the staff to interact with customers in a safe environment. If they make mistakes or if they have learnings, they can pause it, rewind it, play over again. Think about almost being your typical in-person training roleplaying session. We can role play now with VR and create dynamic environments that are reflective of the person's actual job experience and expose them to things that they'll need to learn.

A more extreme example of this, I've seen tools that are teaching frontline workers with respect to first responders. These are police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, doctors, social workers, exposing them to environments that frankly, most of us can't fully appreciate. I haven't shown up at a crime scene where there's been a horrible tragedy. I haven't had to deliver heartbreaking news to a family member or to a friend. Unfortunately, these professionals are under-appreciated for and they do want it on a semi-regular or a consistent basis. As you can appreciate, that takes a significant emotional toll on anybody.

Virtual Immersive Learning: Virtual reality is a compelling solution if you want to increase intimacy of communication.

We can do this in two ways. We can expose them to these elements and then we can try and triage and help them after that, or we can expose them proactively and give them a sense of what they can expect so they can build the tools and the resilience and the methods of integration so that when they experience these troubling events, they're not having to have suffered as a consequence of that. It takes therapy in this context from being reactive to now being proactive. We see it being used reactively when it comes to veterans returning back from Afghanistan or from other parts of the world where they experienced horrible things. What we're doing now is we're helping them after they come back. What I love about this technology is you can create simulations that expose people to things in small increments upfront so it builds that resilience, whether there's a phobia around spiders or something more complicated like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Starting with the power of experiential learning, something I've been big on for years, because as you said, there aren't many people that love to learn through PowerPoint and lecture even though most of the learning going on out there and most of what's presented are the traditional webinar form. Even what we're doing, we're presenting a presentation to people and giving a talk. The goal is to try to make things more experiential and with VR, you're making it even more immersive. I can imagine a lot of people nodding their heads going, “This sounds like it could be beneficial but I'm terrified of this technology. How do I make this work?” How do you go do it?

Let me be clear. I want to state my own limitations. Up until 2020, I was along with everybody else. I've built hundreds of learning programs in a corporate environment that included PowerPoint slides, talking points and lectures for leadership, diversity inclusion, operational training, customer service training. I architected, designed and built them all. I, like a lot of HR leaders or business leaders, don't have an instructional design background. I don't have a learning science background, but I learned from people that taught me skills that I then brought into my own practice, believing I was doing the right thing. As a consequence, I wasn't spending the time asking myself, “Is there a better way of doing things?”

COVID-19 clearly is a tragedy, it's affected the entire globe in ways that we can't fully appreciate. I have been fortunate that my family is healthy, I'm healthy, I haven't experienced a significant job loss as a result of the pandemic. However, it's given me space to look at the problem and then therefore some of the solutions that can solve this problem. For the folks out there going, “Maybe I'm doing some of these things that aren't right.” That's okay. You're in good company. The majority of the world right now is doing things the traditional way. That's the way we've been taught. Here's the cool thing, the science supports it. When I've done the research going back with the reports with Stanford, Yale and MIT, I would encourage folks, “I can send some links, we can provide the research, it's there.”

It shows that experiential learning increases learner adoption around knowledge, skills retention and skills transfer. Talking about an organization here, Honeywell put mixed reality headsets into their onboarding process because what they do is experienced colleagues will teach new colleagues and the overlay of the traditional Honeywell training with specific advice from the seasoned colleagues that they put into mixed reality headsets, so the employee is getting a combination of, if you will, the template boilerplate learning but with real-life, almost having a peer side-by-side, helping them think through this training, which again scales the opportunity for application and increases knowledge retention and knowledge attraction.

Science and economics support the use of virtual reality in immersive learning. The only remaining barrier to adoption is fear. Click To Tweet

In addition to this being an incredible learning experience, which let's be honest, it should be enough of a reason to do this. The fact of the matter is that cost comes into play. There's a perception that virtual reality is expensive. “I’ve got to buy a headset. I have to have the right technology in place. We're not set up for this amount, I'm a small business.” I hear this a lot. Here's the cool thing. I worked for organizations and I'll be kind that we’re frugal. I've never had the luxury of the operational or capital budget even as a CHRO that increased year-over-year. My budget was always reduced. I always had to self-fund my own crazy ideas. That was coming to, “Matt, do you want to do this? Great. You find a way to pay for it and you can do whatever you want.”

I've gotten good at building business cases to find mutual benefit and in such a way that gives enough of a buffer that the value is clear. When I build a business case for example on learning technology, I'll bake in the cost of the VR headset and I'll balance it with a faster path to adoption. I can shorten training by 20% or 30%, which when you back out the wages of the trainer, the trainee, it more than covers the cost of a headset. The challenge will then be is, how do you do it at scale? How do you use the technology for the right use cases because it's not fit for everything?

Let me be clear. VR is not the solution for all the world's problems, but it is a compelling solution for things where you want to increase the intimacy of communication. I think about recruitment, learning and development, and performance management but it's not meant to replace phone calls, Zoom calls, emails or instant messaging. Each of those has their own utility. The challenge is we've been using those two-dimensional communication tools for three-dimensional communications. That's the challenge. Other than us being in the same room, which unfortunately it's not possible with this pandemic, the best way we can do this is through a virtual reality environment where you are fully immersed in the room with the other person. That is the real selling of the value proposition.

Once we accept that the science and the economics are there, the only remaining barrier is adoption. That comes to your point, which is fear or the belief that, “I'm not the right person or my organization isn't the right organization to adopt this.” I would say this to people thinking about that. If it's a fear question, send me a note, send me an email, find me on LinkedIn, I'm happy to spend time with anybody to have the conversation. I've gone through this journey myself. In early 2020, I believe virtual reality was a gaming tool. My brother, my nieces and nephews would play games on VR. It was a fun family event. That's what I saw it as. When I started to think about this tool in terms of its intentionality for things like I mentioned, performance management, recruitment, training development, and I put a different lens on the conversation, I realized this solves a significant amount of problems if we can pair it with the right environments and solutions.

If the issue is fear and acknowledge, I would encourage folks to educate themselves and reach out to me directly because the science and the economics support it. It comes down to adoption. The Global HR Summit, spoiler alert, that was a giant Trojan horse. That was an opportunity for me to bring several thousand of my closest business colleagues into a room and many of the experienced virtual reality for the first time. The feedback that I received was reminiscent of what I said to you, which is they had no idea that it could be used for this. They had no idea that the power and the potential that it could unlock for them, not only individuals but as leaders and as organizations.

Virtual Immersive Learning: The purchase of VR headsets may mean additional cost, but its use offsets a lot of expenses that would otherwise be incurred in in-person settings.

It's one of those things where I can explain this and we could talk for hours and hours about use cases and pricing, business cases, it's not going to resonate until you put on the headset. For those folks who have some curiosity and interest, I would encourage you to borrow a headset. Find somebody in your connection even it's your children or your kids' networks, find a headset and try it. If you don't believe what I believe, send me a note and tell me that too. I'd love to hear that. I've put 25 Fortune 500 executives into VR headsets for the first time, every single one of them has sent me a note and said, “I didn't expect this. This is much more than I thought. Thank you for giving me this experience.” Several of them have already decided to apply virtual reality technology now inside of their organizations because they've had the firsthand experience, we can talk and talk but you have to experience it for yourself.

Practicality Of VR In The Remote Work Environment

It's the new take on the old mantra, “Don't knock until you tried it.” Give it a shot, try your vegetables before you say you don't like them. I had my experience back in January 2020 when I hosted my first conference, Talent Development Think Tank. We had a VR company there in our tech cafe and I put a headset on. It was a DEI awareness situation where I got to be a woman in a meeting in a man's world and see what it's like. I was angry. I experienced it and I can see the effectiveness of that which is cool. I love what you did with the Global HR Summit. You brought many thousands of people together to experience that, and you're changing a lot of hearts and minds. My next question is more on the practicality of if you're in an office, you could have some shared headsets that a lot of people could use. When you talk about scale in a COVID world, a virtual world, are you sending headsets out to all of the people and employees to use at home? Are they sending those around? Are they getting it each of their own? This is more tactical and practical but this is what I imagine a lot of people are wondering, “How do I make this work for some of my development programs?”

We talked a lot about virtual reality, which is far and away the most immersive experience. To participate in virtual reality, you need a headset. Headsets start from the Google cardboard, which you can procure for about $20 in the US, all the way through to expensive gaming headsets which are in the thousands of dollars. They are used more for transferring holograms, having real-life replication of experiences where you need more data to flow through the headset. The vast majority of users, including myself, use more of what's an individual device like an Oculus Quest, Oculus Go or an HTC Vive which are, in most cases, $400 to $600 per unit. It could be a limiting factor for organizations if they're considering buying these for every single person in the organization if you don't think about the use cases for it.

Let me give you an example. I was talking to a CHRO who runs a sports organization of 250 employees. They previously had office space that they leased out at about $40,000 a month, which they're using between the office hours of 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, five days a week, excluding holidays, vacations and weekends. In that case, they're paying $40,000 a month for space that they're using fewer hours than the spaces available. It's half the utilization rate. What they've done is they've said, “In this COVID-19 world, we're not going to all come back to the office ever. We're going to have rotational office situations or we're going to give people the option to work from home or work from the office.” Either way, they need to downsize.

They've taken their office space and cut it in half. Now, they're spending $20,000 a month instead of $40,000 a month. They have $20,000 a month either put the bottom line to put into other activities in the organization or to make investments. This CHRO having had the experience of virtual reality through the conference has said, “I want to allocate a portion of that for headset procurement. To do that, I’m going to justify the cost within my organization because my CEO and my board aren't going to let me spend tens of thousands of dollars on VR headsets on a whim. They want to see the business case.” He's built a business case on three uses. The first one is they're using it for customer prospecting. They use it for the sales process. They ship headsets to their prospective clients and put them through an immersive virtual reality sales experience.

You don’t have to learn the hard way. You can learn by going through experiences virtually and then replicate those in real life. Click To Tweet

In addition to an employee application, there's a customer application. The challenges that employers are experiencing, engaging and inspiring employees in a two-dimensional way, salespeople are experiencing trying to work with customers because as you can appreciate, conversion rates drop materially when you don't have a personal relationship and you're trying to close deals over Zoom or over email. Before, we would fly to an office, we'd rent a hotel, we'd pay for rental cars, we'd buy meals, we have an entertainment budget, and you do that a few times and hope that you close some deals. Now, we can't fly, we can't spend money on hotels, we can't get rental cars and the food was never that good to begin with.

What we're doing instead is they're shipping headsets at $500 a pop, asking the prospect to meet them in virtual reality, and they're closing more business deals through that method. They used to close before in-person because you can create an immersive experience that is customizable. We can build a world for somebody that is unique. If you want to have a meeting in the African savanna, great. You want to have a meeting next to the Eiffel Tower, you can have that. We can build whatever we want and put the prospect and the client in that space and have them interact with a PowerPoint presentation with a virtual world. BentoHR, my organization, we sell digital transformation consultancy services, which is an opaque term that few people understand, including me half of the time. It's better to explain that through a 30-minute journey where I can take you through a long conversation through multiple environments and explain what it means for you. It helps the customer better understand a complex offering rather than me showing PowerPoint slides, stats and images or the logos of companies that I've worked with.

From a sales application, it’s also a benefit. Back to your question which is how do you scale this for organizations? It's about finding the right use cases. For this client, they've determined that sales is one application. Another application for them is recruitment. They started to do recruitment now for executives and very technical positions through virtual reality to give that candidate an experience with the employer when they can't be physically in the same space, whether they're in the same city or anywhere around the world. The third that they’re using it is for team meetings. They have decided to make a significant investment and start to buy quantities of headsets. They're now piloting this with individual work units, HR being one, where they're starting to have team meetings, town halls, weekly standups, scrum meetings, but everyone is in the same room because they're all in virtual reality.

Last but not least is they're having this tool be used for training internally. They're training their employees on everything from company culture, company history, policies, procedures, processes and they're now using the headset in four different ways. We had a conversation, they're now using it for a fifth way, which is they going to take their existing clients through and give them a summary of how they're performing relative to the expectations of their product and service. They're using the tool as a retention tool for their existing clients as well. That's five use cases for the same headset.

It requires you to buy a headset and engage with your client. If you view it as a replacement or a substitute for investments that are already occurring, take away your travel budget, entertainment budget, food, rental cars and hotel budgets, office space in terms of your corporate real estate space, the money you spend on trainers and trainees, and think about how much faster people can adapt knowledge. You can find offsets and substitutes for these cases. The CHRO has now deployed this in his business. He saved the company money, enhanced the experience and they're closing more sales. It's literally a win-win for everybody around it.

Virtual Immersive Learning: With individualized learning tools, you can determine where people are at, close that individual gap and curate learning experiences that fit the needs of the learner.

The issue is his executive team needed to be convinced. They needed to put a headset on for the first time because they didn't believe it. They thought it was way too out there. We're a company that does things based on relationships. We need to meet people face-to-face. That's the cornerstone of our business. Unfortunately now, that's not an option. We're looking at what can we do that most closely replicates that in-person experience? As people get more comfortable with the technology, they'll find that in some cases, it's a preferred option because you can look at reducing your overheads and make the investments in things that are engaging your employees and better engaging with your customers.

That’s interesting and compelling. I'm a little upset now that you and I are doing this over Zoom from our homes, when we could have met at a cafe in Paris and done this over a coffee next to the Eiffel Tower.

I'm going to send you a headset next time, we're going to have some croissants. We'll get some cafe. We’ll listen to music in the background. It would be great.

Investing In Individualized Learning

You convinced me on VR. There are definitely many great uses for this. I see how companies are leveraging not just for development programs but recruiting and customer acquisition, all that stuff. What other learning technologies should be on the radar for people as they're developing their more robust, virtual learning programs these days?

I love this question for a number of reasons and I'll stick my bias upfront. I love to learn and I hate education. To me, education symbolizes bureaucracy and an instructor-centric method of knowledge transfer. That's not the way that things should be. In the same way, I've grown up in the retail customer service environment. We always put the customer at the center of all of our thinking. I don't know why we haven't applied that same methodology for the learner in education, but it's been slow to change. It's happening but it's been slow. When I think about learner-centric type experiences, I think about customized learning pathways and taking the learner from where they are to where you need them to be.

The destination en masse could be the same place. The question is you want your management team to be more inclusive around diverse cultures, thought leaders and other experiences. You want them to get to a certain point, but they're all starting from different points. They've all had different life experiences, training programs, organizations they've worked for that have got them to some level of where they are now. With individualized learning tools including artificial intelligence, with the backend with the data and the analytics off of them, you can determine where people are at and grab a baseline and then enclose that individual gap and curate learning experiences for them that fit the needs of the learner.

Don't force every single person to go through the exact same content because for some, it's repetition. For others, it's going way too fast. You can build a program and a pathway using technologies to do that. A couple of tools you need to do that. You would need an LMS that has the capability to have tools that are AI-enabled. You need to have more robust learning programs that have multiple different paths like choose your own adventure, so you can assess the learner upfront and then you can put them through the pathway that makes the most sense for them. You also need analytics in the background to assess the capabilities of the individual and the progression. Andy, you know this more than most, learning is one of those areas that unfortunately is first on the line to get reduced or cut altogether when organizations are looking for money.

I have had countless conversations with CFOs, CEOs, CTOs and boards about, “Matt, we need to find some money to hit the next quarter's revenue target or cost target. Can we reduce the training budget by $100,000?” My first question will be like, “Where did the number come from? That's the number we need to save. This seems to be easy. Can we do this?” You have to be able to have the analytics to say, “We can reduce the budget by as much as you want but here are the consequences of reducing that to $100,000 investment in terms of lost productivity, higher return over and then perhaps customer experience in some cases.” Without the analytics of being able to show the actual impact, the ‘so what’ of what the learning is trying to accomplish, you're going to be in tough especially in times where finances are constrained in most organizations to be able to justify why you're making these investments.

Before people say things like, “It should just be common sense and employees should get learning.” That's not the way the world works. It's not the way that other organizations treat their marketing functions, their IT functions or their strategy functions. They all have to build business cases and they all are called on the carpet when they don't realize ROI is consistent with the investment. HR needs to accept the fact that we need to carry that mantle as well and be much more open to tools around measurement to demonstrate the efficacy of the work that we're doing.

If for no other reason and to give ourselves credit for helping advance a workforce either close knowledge gaps, close skill gaps or close competency gaps. Learning is a smart investment when it comes to your people. It does improve retention, engagement, innovation, customer and employee experiences. If you can't prove that, then you're having to compete for finite resources against other leaders in the organization who can prove the efficacy of their actions. I've been around enough boardroom tables to know that oftentimes, every single business case around the table is a compelling business case, but they only can choose so many. If you don't have a business case, then you're already off the list before you even get started.

If you do have a business case, you're in the ring and you get a chance to have a conversation. The more data you have, the more you can work with your leaders to be able to make those investments on a go-forward basis. That's the way we’ve got to think about learning around the technology is, “What tools should we be having that is going to help advance our interests, which are to help support the learners in the organization?” If the tools that we have in place aren't doing that, then we should look at getting different tools. It goes both ways. If it's not working, we should change it. We have sometimes this fear of measurement because our concern is not going to be able to demonstrate the efficacy.

If we have that concern, then we should be changing our programs because we shouldn't be throwing money down the well. The money could be used for a whole bunch of other more useful things. If your learning experience is static, two-way, disengaging and the retention or the application of knowledge is very low, stop wasting people's time and money. Rebuild the programs using proper tools or stop training and do things right. It's better to train somebody the right way or do nothing than to train somebody in a dissatisfactory way. That's the piece that I would want to convey. Whether it's AI, analytics or VR, it's building those use cases with a real strong business case around them, and being able to quantify the efficacy of what you've been able to do.

VR And D&I

I love that making the business case, connecting it to the business strategy and then making sure it's effective. The last question I have for you, Matt, is when you think about all these technologies, one thing that's top of mind for a lot of people in talent development these days is improving diversity, equity and inclusion. I’m wondering what have you seen work well with any of the learning technologies you're involved with VR or anything else that has helped move the needle, measure impact or change when it comes to DEI?

I love that it's two white guys having this conversation about this. This is great because we can and we should be having this conversation. It's not somebody else's responsibility. The reality is still in far too many organizations, people who look us are making the decisions around budget allocation, resource allocation and strategic priorities. Having this conversation is a good first step. What I would say to that is I go back to the VR piece. Here's the thing, Andy. In our hearts, I know you as an individual, we've had many conversations. I know that you genuinely care about people, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, however, you and I have never had the experience of what it's like to be somebody who's a person of color, LGBTQ+ or has a disability of some sort.

We can relate to it, have empathy for it, watch documentaries, see books, read articles and take away something from that, but the integration of that knowledge where we would apply learnings differently or take different steps and change the way that we look at the world won't happen through two-dimensional mechanisms. That's been the challenge traditionally with most tools. It's been, “Watch this video, listen to the speaker, go through this exercise.” These things are two-dimensional. They don't convey emotion and feeling. You mentioned earlier, you've been through an experience in virtual reality. That, in my opinion, is the solution because you can give somebody a firsthand experience of what it's like to be a woman in a board meeting, or I've seen ones where it's a person of color walking down the street who's being bombarded with racial discrimination comments.

You can put somebody in that experience and you feel it, not entirely the same, but you certainly feel a lot more inside than you do if you read a good Buzzfeed article or watch a compelling documentary on Netflix. As a consequence of that, you are probably and more likely than not going to make significant changes in how you see the world. It will ultimately, because of the way that you are wired, govern some changes around how you approach different situations, problems or approach the ideation of different solutions. For me, this is where virtual reality becomes compelling whether it's a DEI complex, but even more broadly, a leadership context. There are far too many leaders that are skewing more towards being cautious and conservative around interacting with employees because they're afraid to make a mistake.

We're in a culture of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and in the US, major political ramifications of choosing one over the other. Leaders, therefore, are defaulting to doing nothing. They're not engaging. They're leaning back. They are not leaning in because they don't want to make a mistake. They don’t want to be canceled, get fired. They don't want to be on social media for the wrong reasons, so they default to doing less out of fear for what could happen, not maliciously by something that may make mistake or a bad habit that they've created.

What we should be focusing on rather than yelling at each other back and forth is saying, “This has got to be different.” We need to give these people the experiences and the learnings in a safe environment where you don't have to learn by working your shit out with other people. You can learn by going through experiences and then replicating those experiences. We can pause and go, “You can't say that, that's inappropriate. Did you consider the implications of how you approach that?” We can talk through situations in a simulated environment whether it's in a DEI context or a leadership context, and help people get more confident in themselves in how they show up in these environments, which may be unique and foreign to them. When they are faced with these in real life, they show up how they want to show up which is warm, caring and inclusive, in which the vast majority of leaders that I talk to fall into that category. It's a small percentage of people who are not of that mindset.

The vast majority I talked to are afraid to make a mistake. If we can give them experiences that make them more comfortable, we're going to see more engaged leaders both in the DEI context but also more broadly in the leadership context. That excites me because that's been a missing link. I don't know about you, Andy, but I've been in multiple organizations, Fortune 1000 companies, multiple industries for many years. People look to me now as, in some cases, a thought leader or somebody who shares content. I've never gone through a formal leadership program. I've learned through the school of hard knocks by making mistakes and getting feedback. The reason I was able to make those mistakes is that I showed up vulnerably. I got great leaders and great mentors who were able to give me little tips and tricks along the way. I was intentional about the experiences that I put myself through by way of my career, but not everybody has those benefits. We can replicate those experiences and we can make it less painful for everybody involved if we use technologies like virtual reality to break down those barriers.

That is powerful and a great way to wrap things up. I want to go back to a summary of the many things that we covered in this conversation. We talked about how the learning landscape has changed under COVID, the challenges getting in the way of leveraging technology like VR. The importance of leveraging experiential and immersive learning over things like PowerPoint, traditional webinars and lectures. How virtual reality can create that immersive experience for the learner. How to start using VR in your organizations. How we can scale that and overcome some of the fears, cost barriers and things like that, as well as how companies are using VR to close more business in different situations, other learning technologies and experiences, AI, customized learning paths. Why you need LMS for AI. Why we need to pay attention to analytics and finally, the importance of using VR to improve the DEI experience and improve the empathy of our leaders of people out there especially those that look like you and I. There’s a lot of valuable information here. Matt, if anybody wants to get in touch with you and follow you, I was going to ask where they want to go and where they should go. Also, I know you ran the Global HR Summit, which introduced this VR concept to tons of people. Is there still a way to go back and watch some of those? Are there other replays available? How can people find out more information?

First off, thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation. I always enjoy our chat, Andy. I can't wait to do it again in different contexts as we talk about the rest of 2020. As we seek to help equip business leaders with the tools, they need to be more effective. I'm excited about that. If anyone wants to get ahold of me, and when we talked about a lot of stuff, you mentioned it. If any of this stuff half landed but you have questions, comments or concerns, find me on LinkedIn. I live on that platform. You'll see my face on there. I put out content every single day in a number of different contexts, not just VR but culture, learning, business and economics. I’m happy to share those conversations.

You can find more information about the summit, GlobalHRSummit.com. We have recorded the entire conference. We had keynotes from Tom Furness, the Grandfather of Virtual Reality. We had Nick Vujicic who is an inspirational speaker of LifeWithoutLimbs.org. We had a collection of over two dozen business leaders in HR from the largest companies on the planet talking in panels, podcasts and workshops. We've curated all of that content. It’s all available on that website. There will be links to our YouTube channel, to our social media links to me directly, check it out. You will see some of your favorite and most recognizable people but in avatar.

Thank you, Matt, for coming on and sharing so much valuable information. This was fantastic for me. Thank you to all of you who read this session. Make sure you write down those points that you learned, what are those things you want to go out and try. Reach out to Matt if you need to. If you haven’t already, make sure you get your all-access pass so you can go back and watch this again, as well as all the other presentations we have and get access to our live Q&A with Matt. With that, I will say goodbye. We'll see you in the next session.

• TalentDevelopmentVirtualSummit.com
• Matt Burns
• GlobalHRSummit.com
• Thinking Inside The Box Podcast
• Hacking HR
• Honeywell
• LinkedIn – Matt Burns
• LifeWithoutLimbs.org
• YouTube – Matt Burns