Occupational Health and Safety is a discipline whose progress in recent decades has been dazzling. From timid beginnings in which it was more linked to the will of companies and institutions, to the present day in which it has become a structural policy of organisations. However, despite its comprehensive assimilation, OHS training still faces obvious obstacles in achieving efficient results, especially in complex sectors such as industry. 

It is easy to put oneself in the situation of an industrial company that needs to train employees in extreme situations or controlling highly specialized machinery but is unable to recreate an environment close to the real one. In other words, training in Occupational Health and Safety has traditionally faced a handicap that is difficult to solve; its theoretical nature in order to learn practical skills. 

This starting point is changing rapidly thanks to the adoption of new immersive technologies that manage to introduce employees into an interactive environment through virtual reality. It is therefore a question of creating safe scenarios that allow the transition from the theoretical to the practical, in an efficient, attractive way, with a multitude of possibilities and, above all, totally safe. 

Why work on Occupational Health and Safety through virtual reality?

The benefits of using immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality in this field are obvious:

• It adds additional motivation to the training thanks to the interactive technological component. It is not the same to study a manual or solve supposedly practical situations by means of a questionnaire as it is to put on a pair of glasses and interact with an environment that simulates the real one, with a clear component of stimulating and motivating gamification. 
• It increases the success of the learning process and its assimilation. The acquisition of concepts and theories is much easier if it is done through a first-person, purely visual experience. Moreover, it is 100% customisable thanks to a number of associated tools. 
• It is more efficient and cheap. In the industrial sector, it is not usually possible to carry out tests or simulations, given the high costs that can be involved in interrupting activity or the difficult handling of machinery. With virtual reality, the training process is low cost and unites the practical and the theoretical in the same dimension. 
• Completely safe, without risk. There is nothing more contradictory than OHS training that involves a certain risk for the operator. By means of virtual reality, it is possible to put emergency situations into practice without compromising the integrity of the workers in any way, avoiding possible accidents through prevention. 

The final objective is that the Occupational Health and Safety training provides employees with the necessary tools so that, if necessary, they can act in the safest way for their integrity and for the correct functioning of the activity. With virtual technology, this process is facilitated thanks to the options of personalisation, monitoring and immersion in an environment that simulates reality, maximizing the putting into practice of the knowledge and the possibility of executing it in first person. 

Where to get training in Occupational Health and Safety with Virtual Reality?

Skylife Infinity Trainer is an immersive virtual reality platform specially designed for simulations and training in situations that are difficult to carry out in a real environment. Within this platform, the Virtual PRL solution provides everything you need for interactive and immersive training, without real risks, in Occupational Health and Safety.