SHRM All Things Work

Eric Abbruzzese on Virtual Reality in the Workplace

Episode Summary

Previously fixtures of the video game landscape, smart goggles and virtual reality headsets are being used today by organizations to train and onboard employees. In this episode of All Things Work, host Tony Lee is joined by Eric Abbruzzese, a VR research director at ABI Research, to discuss how the advent of virtual reality is beginning to shape the workplace.

Episode Notes

Previously fixtures of the video game landscape, smart goggles and virtual reality headsets are being used today by organizations to train and onboard employees. In this episode of All Things Work, host Tony Lee is joined by Eric Abbruzzese, a VR research director at ABI Research, to discuss how the advent of virtual reality is beginning to shape the workplace.

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This episode of All Things Work is sponsored by UKG.

Music courtesy of bensound.

Episode transcript

Episode Transcription

Speaker 1:

This episode of All Things Work is sponsored by UKG. UKG offers HR and workforce management solutions that support your employees and transform your workplace into a work of art.

Tony Lee:

Welcome to All Things Work, a podcast from the Society for Human Resource Management. I'm your host, Tony Lee, head of content here at SHRM. Thank you for joining us. All Things Work as an audio adventure, where we talk with thought leaders and taste makers to bring you an insider's perspective on all things work today. We're discussing virtual reality in the workplace. Once used primarily by gamers, smart goggles and virtual headsets are going corporate companies are increasingly using the tools to thrust employees into realistic situations that mimic what they'll experience on the job. Advocates of the technology say employees who are onboarded or trained using virtual or augmented reality, enjoy the experience much more than those who use traditional methods, and they retain more of what they learn. However, anytime more information flows through new channels, there's always an opportunity for something to go wrong.

Joining us today to discuss how the advent of virtual reality is changing how business is done in some workplaces is Eric Abbruzzese. Eric is research director with ABI Research in Scottsdale Arizona, a firm that provides extensive research on a range of workplace technology issues to such clients as Amazon, Dell, Intel, and many others. Eric, welcome to All Things Work.

Eric Abbruzzese:

Thank you so much for having me, Tony.

Tony Lee:

You bet. Well, so let's start by defining what this is. I'm sure there are people listening who are like, ah, virtual reality. I think I've seen a movie about that, but I'm not really sure what it is, so correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding is that extended reality in the workplace is comprised of three types of experience, right? First, virtual reality, which is totally immersive and requires employees to wear a headset that transports them to a completely made up 3D digital environment. Second, augmented reality, which takes place in the real world, but smart goggles allows outside elements to be super imposed or integrated onto the actual physical space. And then finally, mixed reality is kind of a combination of the two. Does that sound right to you?

Eric Abbruzzese:

Yeah, but with any sort of technology like this, depending on how deep you go, it it gets some variation in there. So for the most part, a hundred percent that's right. At ABI research, we're sort of forced to have very strict definitions around these devices to enable our forecasting. So virtual reality, a hundred percent is full immersive. You know, if the device is off and you're wearing it, you can't see through it. Augmented reality is the opposite of that. If the device is off, you can see through it. It's either a pass through display or something similar. Mixed reality is the one where the market can't quite agree on what to call it. Microsoft was sort of the first to term mixed reality and we at ABI like it, but that is, it is super imposing AR and VR in a way mixed reality for us is sort of a subset of augmented reality where there's still pass through displays.

Tony Lee:

Okay. So from a workplace standpoint, which of those is most popular and why?

Eric Abbruzzese:

So right now, augmented reality. There's a couple reasons for that one I think is simplicity. So it requires the least amount of new content creation. So content meaning things like how to have a remote expertise solution built in, how to put training content to a user, how to do step by step instruction, that's content that needs to be created and pushed to a user. Something like an augmented reality product. Google glass was probably the first really notable one that was a single display, augmented reality solution. Realware and Vuzix are a couple other players today that are in a similar field. It's a much simpler path to get existing content working on a device like that. You also could very quickly tap into the hands-free value of it. That's a huge consideration is hands free versus handheld for something like augmented reality. Immediately with a smart glasses product like that, you get all the benefits of hands-free, which is whatever data you're displaying, it's hands free, and it's less restrictive to the user and that intrinsically has value.

Tony Lee:

So the practical application that I've seen demonstrated several times is an Amazon warehouse, you've got a new employee, they put on the goggles for augmented reality and they basically say, okay, pick this up and carry it over there. That kind of thing, and, and it shows you where things should be. And so you're being trained while you're doing your job. Is, is that a pretty common type of application?

Eric Abbruzzese:

Absolutely pick and pack is sort of the market standard term for it. And so that's a huge use case in logistics and logistics is one of the biggest verticals that ABI Research, at least, tracks. Manufacturing and energy and utilities being the other two really big ones. But yes, reducing errors through something like that is huge increasing efficiency. And depending on the environment worker safety if you're in a hazardous environment or a very complicated environment, being able to have guidance real time or see safety notifications, something like that, that's incredibly valuable from a safety perspective too.

Tony Lee:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean the same idea with the virtual reality demo that I saw, it was for a train engineer. So they're sitting in a comfortable chair with this apparatus on, and as far as they were concerned, they were driving a train. And I guess it's really no different than what airline pilots do and astronauts do. Is it the same kind of application or do you see applications that are just completely different than that?

Eric Abbruzzese:

A lot of it's very similar. So if we're talking like a VR headset versus like a training room, a 3D virtualized training room, something like that, or a cockpit experience that would use traditional screens, VR add a level of immersion over those, usually tracking the head, very accurately tracking movement in space, very accurately. Also the immersion combined with interaction elements. So depending on how it's set up, you can have really detail and granular interaction paradigms that are infinitely adjustable in virtual reality. Whereas you're sort of stuck with the physical object you're interacting with in physical space. There's benefits to both, but that really granular detailed ability to change things around basically infinitely, assuming that the content supports it, is another huge value for VR.

Tony Lee:

So I'm sure people who are listening to this who are not experienced in using this at their company are thinking, oh, well, this sounds cool, but I'm sure it's way expensive, right? And, but I'm looking at ABI forecast that basically say the cost of augmented reality devices are, are going to fall eventually costing an average of just $650 each. And then you also forecast that more than 27 million enterprise smart glasses are going to get shipped over the next five years. Huge growth. What's driving the cost down. And, and is this a cost that really anyone can afford?

Eric Abbruzzese:

Sure. Yeah. So there's, there's two main elements driving it down. One is sort of standard maturation of technology and things get cheaper over time. The other is sort of intrinsic to how the market is progressing, moving into the consumer paradigm. It's been very enterprise focused so far, but consumer AR and consumer VR are really coming into their own. And even for a purely enterprise conversation, that's an important to mention because the devices coming out of that transition are lower costs. They have to be. Microsoft HoloLens has been sort of the defacto mixed reality headset, and it's three or $4,000. And that's really only affordable for some enterprise customers.

On the other hand, we're seeing some comparable headsets from the likes of like Nreal that are mixed reality, full spatial tracking capable, that are sub 1000, sometimes sub five or $600. And so those devices maybe they're marketed towards the consumer space, but they'll be used in the enterprise. And the same idea with Apple, iPhone, iPad and other enterprise mobility devices. The market overall is consumer, heavily consumer. But you know, there's tens, if not hundreds of millions of iPads out there being leveraged for enterprise applications.

Tony Lee:

Sure. So small companies tend to be last to the party here. Are you seeing examples of smaller companies embracing this?

Eric Abbruzzese:

At scale? Yes, but overall not necessarily. One thing that helps small companies is really the immediate potential value. So if we go with a headset, like even a HoloLens, very expensive wouldn't be ideal for a small company, but you can make it work because if you use HoloLens twice for a remote assistance experience, in theory, that saves two trips for an expert. You know, if an expert's off site and they really need to be on site for complicated machine maintenance that traditionally you'd fly them out onto on site they'd work and you'd fly them back with HoloLens or even more simple augmented reality solutions, you have two way audio, one way video at a minimum. You can start adding 3D annotation to that with a proper device. And so you can save a couple trips immediately. And if they're international trips, you're talking about saving thousands of dollars just in travel costs.

You can then compound that with downtime reduction. You don't have to wait for the expert to get on site. The person working on site is more efficient, thanks to some of the annotation and the step by step instruction and things like that. And so the downtime is reduced as well. And if you're talking about, like a complicated factory floor or something like that, in automotive, you could be tens of thousands of dollars sometimes a minute. You know, if you look at four, they make a Ford F150 once a minute. So if they miss out on a couple F 150s that's a lot of sunk cost into downtime, so it can pay off very quickly, even for a small company.

Tony Lee:

So let's talk a little bit more about the differences between augmented reality and virtual reality. So some say that augmented reality is really the game changer for business, because it has more practical uses and is less expensive. You buy that?

Eric Abbruzzese:

If we're speaking at scale, again, yes. I think AR ultimately will be the winner at scale, but I think both can coexist and have been coexisting. VR really can't be beat for immersion and interaction, even versus a HoloLens at the high end of mixed reality. VR is unmatched for tracking in space, for well being able to replace the environment, that's intrinsically not what mixed reality's meant to do. So for use cases where you want to do that or need to do that, VR is the only option.

So they, they definitely coexist, but you know, sort of how we were talking about what these devices do and how to define them earlier, that lines blurring a little bit, most pure virtual reality devices today can do camera pass through. They have one or multiple cameras facing forwards, and they'll pull in the real world almost like the opposite of what you're doing with mixed reality, which is seeing the real world and overlaying. So the line starts to blur a little bit. And so do some of the use cases, you start to see maybe real world training with VR that gets best of both worlds versus mixed reality. So long story short, they definitely coexist. But I think just as you mentioned, sort of the flexibility around being able to see your environment and move around with your real eyes and real vision, that's tough to ignore on the VR side. And so overall that's what wins.

Tony Lee:

So let's flip the whole piece on its head. I mean, there are folks who are getting training as we talked to each other at the top of a hundred story building, or a hundred feet below ground in a sewer. I mean, there are employees working all over the place in many dangerous occupations. Is it necessary? Is it going to be necessary for people to get that kind of training in such a risky environment anymore? I mean, should that be completely replaced by virtual extended reality?

Eric Abbruzzese:

I think in an ideal world it's fully replaced. We don't live in an ideal world. There's always going to be use cases where it's just not possible. Either the content you would need to create is too dynamic to account for, and you just can't create that many variables, or it's just purely not safe to wear a device. Either it'll get caught on something, or if you're working in a hazardous, toxic environment or something like that, you need very specific intrinsically safe devices, which are expensive. So it's tough to operate in those roles. So it's never going to be a hundred percent, but there's so many variables you can account for. There's so many environments you can code into and program for where a lot of training can be moved. So if you were to press me for a percentage, I couldn't exactly give you one how much is going to remain real versus virtual, but just based on the adoption rate, it's a pretty significant amount that at least can be moved into VR and we expect that to transition pretty cleanly.

Tony Lee:

Okay. So we've talked about these hazardous jobs, and we've talked about the typical warehouse type of position, but it seems that augmented reality, virtual reality is being used in so many different fields. Now. I mean, we have examples in the article, in All Things Work about insurance adjusters, bank tellers, I guess UPS has really embraced for their drivers VR training. What else are you seeing any other creative uses?

Eric Abbruzzese:

You know, Walmart always comes to mind. They were very early to the VR training game and they've scaled up pretty dramatically to tens of thousands of training sessions for a variety of their stores. And I remember it initially spawned out of them trying to train employees for crowd control and crowd handling for black Friday. So they could put a user in a VR store and show here's how we expect the crowds to look, here's how to manage it. You know, as a cashier, here's the flow rate you can expect. So there's some really interesting stuff in that regard that Walmart has experimented with. There's other really interesting things in government and military for combat simulation, right? Obviously you can't train on specific combat scenarios safely in the real world cheaply. I mean, if you're training live fire or not, it's still expensive to have an environment and to use it.

So VR, I mean really similar to what we see in gaming can have some pretty immense benefits in that regard as well. Again, that infinite variability and a hundred percent safety and low cost your costs, instead of physical environments and different props and things like that, is virtual. You still have to invest time and resources to create content, but you're buying a device creating that content and can use it infinitely. And so there, in high cost training scenarios as well, there's some interesting plays. Another example is in design. Design and prototyping in automotive, for instance, instead of running on a clay model and iterating countless times on that, which costs time and money, you iterate on a virtual model in 3D space, and eventually you get to physical, but there's a lot of steps in between where you can replace that physical cost and time with virtual.

Tony Lee:

Well, I'm guessing this is really opening up the imagination of folks who are working in training and development and making sure their employees are up to speed on their jobs, but like anything, there is a potential downside, right? So there are security risks that are being raised. I guess hackers are getting involved and some other issues. Is it something that companies should be concerned about or is it being dealt with at a level that it's probably not going to impact the typical company?

Eric Abbruzzese:

I think companies should be concerned as much as they normally are. I don't know if additional concern is necessary. The only, I guess, variable that's new is most of these devices have cameras purposefully. You know, how you're using them for, for the use case, but if you didn't have cameras previously in a training environment, for instance, you have to be cognizant of access to that camera feed, access to that content, that captured content and where that might go. That being said security from a platform perspective looks very similar to what we see in anything else. If you feel secure with your mobile device management solution, it shouldn't be much different for if you add AR and VR into it. Hackers have access to a digital ecosystem, whether it has AR or VR in it or not. So if you know, if you have a break in, then it's going to be a problem, whether you're using AR or VR or not, there might be some more data there.

Like I mentioned the camera access location sometimes as well, but it's, if you're especially in a, like a digital forward workplace where you have enterprise mobile devices and you have cameras and things like that, most of the time, there aren't any specific circumstances where AR and VR add more. You just have more devices to consider and maybe some, some extra data that's stored, but it's handled the same way from a security perspective, you see security certifications. End to end encryptions are very common for AR VR platforms. It all looks very similar to any other type of digital data security.

Tony Lee:

Yeah. It's like anything, there's a risk to everything we do in the workplace, but it sounds like the benefits far outweigh the risk.

Eric Abbruzzese:

Absolutely.

Tony Lee:

Yeah. Well that is going to do it for today's episode of all things work a very big, thank you to Eric Abbruzzese for joining me to discuss virtual reality and augmented reality and mixed reality and everything but real reality in the workplace and what we can expect to see moving forward. Before we get out of here, I want to encourage everyone to follow All Things Work wherever you listen to your podcast. Also listener reviews have a real impact on a podcast's visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review and help others find the show. And finally, you can find all of our episodes on our website at SHRM.org/ATWpodcast. Thanks for listening. And we'll catch you next time on All Things Work.

Speaker 1:

No matter who they are or what job they do. You want to give your employees all the support they need. And UKG, with their HR and workforce management solutions, can give you all the tools you'll need to help you make your people. All of your people feel like they belong. UKG. The cross category leader in HR solutions.