Northern Trains in the UK has turned their driver safety training activities into collaborative team-building exercises. All team members are involved in documenting risky situations and discussing them in small groups.
Northern Trains is a publicly owned train operating company in England that plays a vital role in the country by connecting tens of millions of people to work, leisure, education every year.
The company counts more than 6,500 employees for which training content is produced internally by the learning and training team.
Northern Trains' Learning & Development team used Wonda to organize immersive field trips for safety training sessions for its 1,000 or so train drivers.
Train drivers are invited in groups of 10 to the training room to embark on a learning journey using Meta Quest VR headset and a mix of media content produced and curated for the training module.
After a minute of introduction, everyone is invited to put on the headset and choose their avatar.
In a matter of seconds, everyone one is teleported in a shared experience taking place in a stylish wood loft overlooking the scenic landscape of the grand Canyon, a location that David, the head of training chose from Wonda's 3D room library to start the session.
The atmosphere is sunny, bright, open and also cheerful as everyone makes jokes about the other's avatar appearance!
After a couple minutes of ice breaking, David, who is heading the session, launches the agenda for the day: Safety!
And like magic, everyone is teleported into real-life captures of 20 different risky situations that has been documented in 360 photos.
For each "train stop", David lets everyone in turn share their thoughts about what is to be stressed. Each participant can use their virtual pen to highlight specific areas in the scene. Every participant can comment and then jump to the next situation.
After 30 min of discussion "on site", everyone is invited to take off the headset.
Safety training session done! See you next time for another field trip...!
For this immersive training experience, David and his team at Northern Trains have taken the following approach:
“Wonda is changing Northern Railway Training!”
For David, the results are outstanding. "Everyone loves it". Each session is an opportunity to learn while having fun! And everything has been built internally without the need of any extra help, even if David and his team had no prior VR content production experience whatsoever.
In total, more than 5,000 training sessions has been done in 2 years. Northern Train is now considering many other applications with Wonda.
“With Wonda, the only limit is your imagination” adds David.
