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Writer's pictureWinWin International

Workplace Safety in an Immersive Age

Safety awareness and vigilance is paramount for employees in the agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries. While every operation seeks a zero injury and fatality rate, the nature of the work makes this difficult to achieve. That is why implementing engaging health and safety training programmes is crucial for these industries.


While this may seem easy to fix, most induction and training programmes in these industries are far from engaging if administered at all, leaving employees ill-prepared to deal with dangerous environments.


Immersive technology provides organisations with a new, cost-effective training option that equips teams with the right tools to protect themselves, fellow employees and the community.


Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and 3-D visualisation take safety training to a new level. They allow for the exploration of dangerous scenarios without entering the environment – no need for time-consuming, real-life simulations.


In hazardous environments there is no room for error or mistakes. Imagine a place where learners can make mistakes and learn from them, with no harm to themselves or others: Immersive technologies are the key to that world.


Within these industries, we have seen that immersive experiences can be exceptionally successful in key areas such as:


1. Cardinal or Life-Saving Rules


While on site at a large manufacturing business, we asked a frontline staff member what a “cardinal rule” was. She confidently told us it is “a rule that you will be fired for breaking”. This showed that rules are often not understood for their life-saving purposes, but simply as something to comply with.


How do we move from compliance to understanding? How do we create an interdependent safety state of mind? Immersive learning enables employees to experience dangerous situations first hand, developing their understanding of why these rules exist and how they protect.




This 3-D visualisation allows learners to witness a fatal incident that actually occurred in their organisation, as a result of a tractor driver breaking a cardinal rule associated with vehicles and mobile plants.


2. Hazard Identification


One of the root causes of workplace injuries, illness and incidents is the failure to identify or anticipate hazards.


Immersive learning gives employees the opportunity to explore an environment with potentially dangerous hazards, identifying them and understanding the risk.




This 3-D 360° interactive visualisation allows learners to explore a workshop environment containing various hazards and learn about the risks.


3. Line-of-Fire Incidents


Agricultural, manufacturing and mining industries commonly experience line-of-fire incidents that could have been avoided. While we understand the danger in standing under a lifted load or walking in the path of moving equipment, our personal risk perception tends to tell us it will be fine: “It won’t happen to me”.


Working in hazardous environments calls for an exceptionally high level of situational awareness – regularly looking around, questioning your comfort zone, asking what could go wrong.


Most line-of-fire situations come down to personal choice and 3-D simulations can be hugely successful in testing awareness, giving learners the opportunity to make a choice and witness the outcome without actual harm.




In this 3-D 360° interactive visualisation, the learner is faced with a choice to intervene in a potentially unsafe scenario, as a fellow employee moves to wash his hands in an unmarked substance.



Connectivity is no longer a limitation


One of the significant challenges when operating in Africa is the remote locations of sites and lack of infrastructure for digital training. Africa’s internet and electricity penetration rate is at 40 and 50% respectively, which makes this kind of training nearly impossible. Until now, there has been a clear divide between remote and urban training programmes for this very reason. But we can now take lack of connectivity out of the equation.


IWIN Go, from WinWin International, brings engaging digital training to remote locations – even without data or electricity. Providing learners in remote sites access to the same immersive learning experiences.




The device is fully offline, allowing learners to access VR and AR training and assessment where they are. It can be extended to surrounding communities through educational CSR initiatives.


Albert Einstein said, “Learning is experience, everything else is just information”. Immersive learning affords us the opportunity to share experience, rather than just information. It allows learners to have a virtual experience that, ultimately, ensures they might never have the real experience.

 

WinWin is a fully integrated strategic communications and people engagement agency.


Leveraging our skills and expertise in design, content, digital, videography, motion

graphics and 3D animation, we partner with experts in your business to develop

engaging and accessible solutions that are customised for any of your business

needs. Simply put, we bring the adventure back into learning.


If you have a project in mind or simply want to learn more about how your organisation can take advantage of immersive learning, please get in contact with our team!

 

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