PwC Study Results
Anyone working in the training industry has already heard everything about VR. The topic comes up constantly at conferences, companies are testing initial implementations, and some people are still wondering if it’s really a breakthrough? Or just another trendy buzzword.
PwC therefore decided to examine the effectiveness of VR in soft skills training.
Just a few years ago, soft skills training looked almost identical in every company. A room full of participants, slides with tips on “how to communicate better in a team,” and for dessert, group work — sometimes on a project, sometimes on building a tower out of sticks that looked more like a game than a manager’s real challenges.
Then everything turned upside down. First, the shift of training to the online sphere, then the dynamic development of immersive technologies. So naturally, the question arose: is VR just an impressive gadget, or a real tool that helps develop skills?
PwC decided to find out. In the study “The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Soft Skills Training in the Enterprise” they compared classic training, online workshops, and VR learning. The results? Definitely worth noting.
Does VR Help in Soft Skills Training?
Before we get to the numbers, it’s worth understanding the context. Traditional training (both in-person and e-learning) has one thing in common: it’s incredibly difficult to maintain full attention. In the next room, someone is talking, slides scroll at their own pace, and during a break, you check your email. Trainers compete for attention with notifications, social media, and all technological distractions. In such an environment, it’s difficult to create conditions where a participant truly immerses themselves in the content.
And that’s the first reason why VR makes such a big difference.
In the PwC study, people trained in VR completed the course four times faster than in a classroom setting and half as fast as in e-learning.
The numbers are impressive, but even more interesting is the explanation behind this effect. VR eliminates almost all external distractions. When you put on goggles, the outside world ceases to exist — you don’t see your phone, you don’t hear the office buzz, no one asks you “for a moment,” no other browser window tempts you.
The Power of Immersion: VR and Concentration Levels
This full immersion translates into real data: VR training participants were 4 times more concentrated than in e-learning and over 1.5 times more than in a classroom. This is the result of an environment that finally allows people to focus on learning. And since attention doesn’t wander, the brain processes information faster and more effectively.
Learning soft skills can easily be reduced to theory: presentations, principles, models, and descriptions of behaviors. The problem is that all these things work mainly on an intellectual level. And soft skills like leadership, empathy, communication, dealing with pressure — are located where knowledge meets emotions. And they manifest themselves in situations where you need to be able to react, not just know how you should react.
How VR Technology Supports Soft Skills Development
In the PwC study, people trained in VR were 275% more confident that they could apply a new skill at work than those who underwent in-person training. VR provides a sense of confidence that comes from experiencing a specific situation, such as: a real conflict, a stormy discussion full of emotions, the pressure to convey precise instructions in a very short time, managing change.
VR transforms “scenario description” into “scenario participation.” This is why remembering works differently. The brain does not create a theoretical map, but something closer to the memory of a real event. This is so-called episodic memory, activated by situations embedded in context, along with emotions and awareness of future consequences.
This is why people after VR later say: “I know what I will do next time I’m in a similar situation.” The experience of going through something firsthand gives them a certainty that cannot be achieved after watching presentation slides.
And it is precisely this certainty that is most valuable in the work of a leader or team member. After all, theoretical knowledge of a communication model does not provide as much value as checking one’s own communication style in a crisis situation.
Emotional Engagement: The Secret to VR Effectiveness
The most shocking conclusion from the PwC study concerns emotions. It is emotions that determine whether soft skills truly develop, because emotions inform us: “this is important,” “this concerns me,” “this requires reflection.”
Traditional training often tries to evoke emotions through role-playing, but participants know that “it’s just an exercise,” not a real situation.
In VR, the person in the simulation doesn’t observe the situation, but fully enters it. They see the interlocutor at arm’s length, hear their tone of voice, see emotion in their facial expressions, feel the pressure of time, and the environment reacts to their decisions. By transferring to the virtual world, they forget that it is a simulation and that someone is watching and evaluating them.
It’s no wonder then that PwC noted that VR participants were 3.75 times more emotionally engaged than in in-person training and 2.3 times more than in e-learning. In practice, this means that people not only learn what they should do, but they begin to understand why they react in a certain way. So-called “aha moments” appeared more often, i.e., situations in which a participant suddenly perceives their own pattern of action, prejudice, or automatism. Interestingly, participants rated VR as the most realistic and valuable form of training. Why? Because it gives them the opportunity for safe practice. You can make a mistake, check its consequences, and return to the situation again. In real life, such experiments would be costly, risky, or simply impossible.
And how does this look from the perspective of training companies?
For many training companies, VR still seems like a “future” solution – attractive, but expensive and difficult to implement.
And indeed, at the outset, VR differs from traditional methods. It’s an investment that cannot be compared to preparing another PowerPoint presentation.
But when we look at it from a scaling perspective, something interesting starts to happen. According to PwC, VR becomes cost-competitive with around 375 participants. And when the number of participants increases to about 3,000 people, the advantage of VR becomes overwhelming: the technology turns out to be over 50% cheaper than classic classroom training.
The profitability of VR grows with scale and repeatability – especially for large development programs.
In practice, the cost of VRDC consists of two parts: diagnostic and developmental.
The diagnostic part includes elements responsible for preparing and conducting the study:
- preparing simulations on site at the client’s location,
- training participants in VR operation,
- conducting simulations,
- recording material,
- a brief “hot” debriefing.
This is a stage that allows for the collection of reliable data, and at the same time can serve many groups within one development program. From a cost perspective, this is the part that scales — the more employees go through the process, the cheaper the “net cost per person” becomes for the organization.
The developmental part concerns working on conclusions and translating behaviors into skill development. It consists of:
- soft skills training,
- joint discussion of VR behaviors,
- analysis of simulation material,
- for selected individuals — a full, personalized development report.
Here, the cost primarily depends on the number of participants, because each participant generates additional material for analysis and individual recommendations.
Summary
When we put all the results of the PwC study together, a very consistent picture emerges. VR helps build soft skills because it allows people to learn in conditions that are close to everyday professional challenges.
Traditional training has for years tried to recreate real situations: through role-playing, case studies, or group work. However, even the best-led scene in a training room still remains a scene. The participant knows they are practicing and does not show their natural reactions at all. VR removes this distance. It allows for interaction in which the body reacts, rather than acting. This is why participants remember more from the training, transfer new skills to work faster, and feel more confident in real situations.