Investigating the value of immersive virtual reality tools for organizational training: An applied international study in the biotech industry

Background Immersive virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in organizational training interventions. However, few studies have systematically investigated VR compared to standard training methods in actual organizational contexts. Objectives The focus of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a VR simulation for training professionals in the biotech industry. Aligning training needs to unique media affordances, the study designed an immersive story-based VR simulation for training customer-facing employees on a new product and tested it in an international biotech company. Methods The system was evaluated by comparing its effectiveness to a traditional video presentation with the same content in a randomized between subjects experiment. The sample consisted of 95 employees across three locations: Brazil, Denmark, and USA. Results The VR simulation group performed better than the video presentation group on the outcomes of conceptual knowledge (d = 0.41) spatial knowledge (d = 0.61), transfer intentions (d = 0.57), enjoyment (d = 1.74), self-efficacy (d = 0.68), perceived learning (d = 0.89), personal value (d = 0.83), and organizational value (d = 0.82), but no significant difference was found for factual knowledge (d = -0.10). Implications Results suggest that VR simulations can be effective across cultures in organizational training interventions. VR is specifically effective when the goals of the training are to increase conceptual and spatial understanding as well as enjoyment, and self-efficacy, but not factual knowledge. Furthermore, employees report higher levels of perceived learning, personal and organizational value and transfer intentions after VR training compared to standard video-based training.