Strivr, the leading provider of Immersive Learning solutions, today announced the appointment of technology entrepreneur and Human Resources (HR) technology executive Kristen Hamilton to its Board of Directors. Bringing nearly 30 years of experience across technology, HR, education, and corporate learning, Hamilton currently serves as the SVP of Strategic Partnerships at Guild Education and has played pivotal roles in groundbreaking companies including Koru, Onvia, and Microsoft.
“Kristen’s deep knowledge and extensive leadership across the enterprise L&D space will be an extremely valuable addition to our Board of Directors,” said Derek Belch, founder and CEO of Strivr. “The collective expertise of our leadership team and board is critical in positioning Strivr for the next stage as we continue to connect innovation to workforce performance through impactful Immersive Learning solutions for some of the largest companies in the world.”
“The alignment between education and workforce performance has never been more critical as enterprises face ongoing challenges such as employee engagement, effective onboarding, and declining retention rates,” said Hamilton. “Enterprise VR is poised for its ‘product moment,’ and I am thrilled to be joining Strivr’s board of directors as we hold the reins in leading the future of Learning & Development.”
How Walmart infuses kindness into de-escalation training
Is it possible to teach kindness? What role does kindness play in de-escalating a frustrated customer? As Walmart discovered, not only can we teach frontline workers to be more kind, but associates are eager for training on the topic because it builds both their skills and their confidence.
In this article, you’ll learn about one of the most successful customer service trainings deployed for the world’s #1 retailer, Walmart. A combination of empathy-building, de-escalation, and handling difficult conversations, the Virtual Reality-based experiences have exceeded nearly every expectation set by the organization in terms of adoption, feedback, and performance. And it's all about infusing more kindness into customer service. Maybe we all should take this training!
Read on to learn from Strivr, the company that’s deployed over 50 VR training experiences about how VR not only improves skills, but also influences how employees feel: valued, confident, and engaged.
Read more here http://www.strivr.com/blog/be-kind/
DDI and Strivr partner to pioneer leadership development in Virtual Reality
Leaders will be able to build and sharpen their leadership skills like never before by immersing themselves in deeply realistic simulations, thanks to a partnership between DDI and Strivr.
The partnership brings together DDI’s decades of experience in leadership development with Strivr’s market leadership in virtual reality-based (VR) immersive learning. Through the partnership, companies will be able train their leaders in key leadership skills through a combined immersive and peer discussion format. The first virtual reality scenarios DDI and Strivr have developed include resolving conflict and driving change, and are powered by Strivr’s Immersive Learning Platform.
”This partnership gives leaders an opportunity to have a meaningful, cutting-edge virtual reality experience that helps them build their skills by actually applying them in a real-world setting with simulated interactions,” said Tacy M. Byham, Ph.D., chief executive officer of DDI. “Virtual reality is often used to train people on hard skills, like safety, operations and tasks like stocking shelves. This partnership with Strivr is creating a new frontier in the development of leadership and soft skills by providing the coursework and scenarios to give participants crucial opportunities to practice.”
According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2021, leadership skills such as emotional intelligence, coaching, and driving change are among the most critical for the future. These skills help to prevent burnout, support digital transformation, retain talent, and much more. This data builds on previous research from global HR industry analyst Josh Bersin, a partner in the DDI research and a member of Strivr’s advisory board, that points out the ‘power skills’ of the future are not technical, they’re actually behavioral.
“In a time when workforces are more dispersed and potentially more disengaged than ever before, rapid and effective skills development for leaders can be the key to ensuring their businesses succeed,” said Derek Belch, founder and chief executive officer of Strivr. “Together with DDI, we are enabling organizations to address these challenges head on through an immersive learning platform that delivers critical and scalable VR experiences to build and elevate leadership performance.”
The programs work by combining digital learning with realistic practice in VR.
Within the virtual reality experiences, participants may face more challenging, focused scenarios than in traditional partner-based practice. In particular, they may deal with highly emotional situations, which are common in real life, but tend not to come up in a partner-based role playing. In addition, participants can record and play back the scenario to review their performance.
Above all, the scenarios offer a safe practice space, where learners can fail without fear of embarrassing themselves in front of a peer.
DDI and Strivr expect the partnership to be a game-changer for companies that want to use the latest technology to create deeply memorable and effective leadership experiences. With DDI’s award-winning inclusion scenario being covered for its potential to change corporate America, and Strivr’s platform having powered nearly 1.5 million learner sessions in VR, companies can now leverage these powerful tools to help their leaders cement crucial new skills and elevate the leadership cultures within their companies.
To learn more about Immersive Learning, and hear from DDI and Strivr experts on their approach to building leadership skills through VR, sign up for this live webinar on May 6th @ 10am PT / 1pm ET.
Upskilling managers with Virtual Reality based soft skills training
Upskilling managers is essential to team and business success. Traits of a great manager include the ability to instill confidence, demonstrate exceptional communication skills, and motivate others to engage and perform at their best. Confidence can be contagious, and may inspire employees to embark on a managerial track themselves.
But many managers, especially new managers, are promoted for their “hard” skills on the job as an individual contributor. Managers often lack experience in one or more of the soft skills that lead to team success. How can companies build confidence and skills to develop great managers?
VR presents an opportunity to upskill managers who are confident and able to lead in volatile business climates while inspiring employees. As companies chart out their ability to educate and retain leaders, solutions like VR provide an engaging experience that prepares a manager for likely scenarios that they will encounter at work.
Read more https://www.strivr.com/blog/manager-upskilling/
Contact:
Name: Kristi Rawlinson
Email Address: kristi@strivr.com
The Future of Work is Immersive - report by Harvard Business Review
What does it mean to say the future of work is immersive?
In this Strivr-sponsored report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services (HBR-AS), we take a closer look at what this means. Amid a rapidly changing work environment, “the tools you use for preparing your workforce can become your competitive advantage,” writes HBR-AS. In other words, what got you here likely won’t get you through the future. New tools – immersive tools – are the key to unlocking workforce performance and creating value.
In fact, as HBR-AS points out, Immersive Learning is already helping business leaders tackle critical workforce challenges around preparation, hiring, training, and upskilling. And they’re getting impressive results.
FedEx Ground is meeting the demands of an e-commerce explosion. In retail, Walmart has scaled effective and engaging learning to millions of associates. Verizon has created better customer experiences for tier one business customers. The list goes on.
In the paper, you’ll get inside the minds of the executives tackling these issues. They talk about how Immersive Learning has fundamentally improved employee preparedness, confidence, and performance. And they share how, with Immersive Learning, they are meeting today’s hiring and upskilling needs while setting a foundation for the future of work.
Download the exclusive report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services to discover the path to the immersive solution that has reinvented hiring and training and is shaping the future of work as we know it, here https://www.strivr.com/blog/report-hbr-work-immersive/
Contact:
Name: Kristi Rawlinson
Email Address: kristi@strivr.com
