By
Henrik Rydén
Many organizations we work with, recruit and train employees for field locations. The locations can be everything from war zones to humanitarian emergencies, to remote and isolated places. Most jobs and most locations may not suit everyone, in fact only a few.
Talents also differ in their own need for preparation for difficult assignments depending on personality, time to prepare, life situation, previous experience or even on their expectations. As a recruiter or trainer your job is primarily to find the right match between person and job and then develop and train the talent to be ready to face what she/he likely will face when deployed.
One of the more comprehensive methods of assessing suitability are done through Assessment Centers along with other methods. We believe that Virtual Reality could replace and improve the simulation exercises and the preparation or training component when relocating to a field locations. With the Virtual Reality technique, the environment in the those locations can be simulated allowing us both to assess the suitability of a person with a job scenario in the same environment she/he later will work in and at the same time prepare her/him better for the actual environment.
Using the VR technique will help speed up the recruitment process and increase the quality of the application received. Even motivated talents with a profound interest may change their minds when exposed to the reality. Making this discovery before applying or before deployment would save organizations both resources and time.
The Virtual Reality (VR) technology is used mainly in the gaming, military and airplane industry, but is starting to be used elsewhere as well, The Displaced project, presented in the New York Times is an example. Today several public institutions and international organizations spend time and resources on tests, trainings or Assessment Centers (AC). In very few of the assessment methods, exercises are in their real setting. With the VR technique it would allow to assess, onboard, prepare or train in a “real” environment without compromising safety or cost.
Impactpool collaborates with more than 100 of the world ́s most important International Organizations (UNHCR, UNICEF, ICRC, IOM). Many organizations assess and train talents before deployment. One challenge today is that the most important part of the test, to test how talents behave in real crises,in situations of humanitarian disaster or other very challenging environments, is down-prioritized to keep the costs low. This is where Impactpool’s VR glasses fills the empty space. We are building an innovative virtual assessment and training tool for humanitarian workers in preparation for these difficult environments. We will create virtual environments similar to those environments in which these talents operate by moving the physical assessment and training into the virtual space.