The Small Business Case for VR and the Role of Policymakers

The busy local coffee shop barista asks the person ahead of you in line how their day is going and thanks them for their patience as they wait. Coffee in hand, you walk past a construction site where the lead is clearly delegating the day’s tasks to the crew. Ten minutes later, you enter your coworking space and overhear an employee thoughtfully sharing feedback with their coworker about the front desk registration process. On your lunch break, you stop by the home of your aging mother, whose eyesight is deteriorating. Her caretaker sits to the side of your mother’s direct line of vision and explains a new prescription to her. 

You just witnessed employees from four small businesses putting critical skills into action at their jobs–from employability (formerly known as soft) skills like communication to industry-specific skills like understanding how vision loss progresses. Having witnessed these positive scenarios, you might imagine these small businesses provide regular training for their employees, a critical part of a quality job. After all, employees perform better and are more satisfied when they have the skills and confidence necessary to do their jobs. 

But how can we help all small businesses offer timely, consistent training to their employees? Virtual reality (VR), as Jobs for the Future (JFF) saw through our recent pilot program, has the potential to make training more efficient, effective, and scalable for small businesses across the country.  

The Reach of Small Businesses 

The four employees you overheard represent the 61.6 million employees of small businesses in the United States. Small businesses create 62% of new jobs, or 1.6 million jobs each year, and 44% of U.S. GDP. If every small business employee had access to ongoing skill training opportunities, this would tremendously strengthen the U.S. workforce—especially for a sector that is critical for driving innovation and entrepreneurship, which are top priorities for policymakers at local, state, and national levels. 

Don’t get us wrong—small businesses have a lot of competing priorities on a daily basis that sometimes make any training after an employee’s onboarding seem like a luxury. Small businesses constantly make tricky decisions with few resources, their employees often wear multiple hats, and their financial stability is not guaranteed very far into the future. Compared to larger companies, they are less likely to have a dedicated person, such as a human resources professional, responsible for learning, development, and training. 

Yet these challenges are not always so different from what larger companies face: cost, capacity, and business priorities are always trade-offs for business leaders. And small businesses represent too great an opportunity to leave out of the conversation. We can take lessons from larger companies and their successful implementation of VR technology for training while also designing for small businesses’ unique needs.  

VR Technology Designed for Small Businesses 

If small businesses are to benefit from VR training, their voices must be part of the design and development conversations. Designing with small businesses in mind will increase the likelihood that the technology solutions are adaptable, inclusive, and resilient to change. After all, when technology companies build for small businesses, they need to consider a broader range of scenarios, budgets, and considerations to account for the endless variety and nuance within the small business sector. This ultimately makes the technology solution applicable and relevant for a broader market share, resulting in wins for both the technology company and the small business.  

Small businesses also provide valuable lessons for implementing VR training across the U.S. workforce. In our pilot program, JFF saw signs of increased employee engagement and satisfaction due to the skills they learned and the investment in themselves and their careers they felt from their company. Business leaders told us they could see how VR training could lead to better business outcomes in the long term and help them train more workers in a higher-quality and more efficient way. If we are to scale VR training so every employee can benefit, we must consider how to best implement VR training at small businesses.  

What Can Policymakers Do to Support VR Training at Small Businesses? 

We offer the following recommendations for policymakers to support small businesses to engage in VR training. These are based on ideas and lessons learned we heard from small business leaders during our recent VR pilot. 

De-risk the process of engaging with VR, especially for the first time. 

• Put safety and privacy regulations in place for using VR technology, such as usage guidance by age and stipulations for user data. This saves small businesses time in evaluating the risk for their employees.—Contributed by Kathy Alder at Chris-Craft Corporation in Sarasota, Florida 
• Just as you fund programs, fund easy ways to comply with the rules of those programs. For example, make reporting on progress easy by providing intuitive systems and processes that take little time. This, in particular, helps small businesses understand the time and effort required of them will be manageable, and most of their energy can go toward implementing the VR training versus reporting. —Contributed by Al Audette at Building Industry Association of Washington in Tumwater, Washington 

Integrate VR with existing training avenues or established sources for resources and support. 

• Allow current training programs and grants to accept VR training as a viable means of training. Provide a pre-vetted list of VR companies/solutions that would qualify, and make this available to program participants. 
• Use existing industry associations and community organizations that small businesses are already connected to, such as manufacturing extension partnerships and chambers of commerce. By partnering with these intermediary organizations, as JFF did in the recent VR pilot, it is easy to reach and engage small businesses in similar pilot efforts. This approach is advantageous because small businesses are already familiar with working with these types of organizations, and natural cohorts can form by industry or region.—Contributed by Richard Acosta at Grant Associates in New York, New York 

Create community among businesses for engaging with VR—in particular, around learning how to use the technology in the first place. 

• Provide free classes on VR at the library or other community-based organizations. Foundational tech literacy in VR goes a long way with helping small business owners and leaders feel comfortable with the technology and its capabilities, making them more likely to adopt it for their business. —Contributed by Crystal Hughey at Corporate Cleaning in Columbus, Ohio 
• Establish government-funded, citywide VR training programs that bring small business leaders together and offer a community of support, which is important when engaging with something new.—Contributed by Crystal Hughey at Corporate Cleaning in Columbus, Ohio 

Provide new funding for grants and programs that tie VR into workforce training from the start and encourage sharing out of lessons learned directly from small business leaders themselves. 

• Outline training grants for small businesses that ask for use of VR and offer funding to make that possible, including for purchasing the technology, building tech literacy, and increasing capacity. Additionally, ask for results and be realistic with what a business can accomplish the first time they try out VR. Focus on awareness and access while keeping an eye on longer-term outcomes like increased retention and improved customer satisfaction.—Contributed by Kathy Alder at Chris-Craft Corporation in Sarasota, Florida 
• Encourage career exploration programs to utilize VR, which can show individuals what potential careers could look like going physically to a job. This helps bring awareness to multiple career pathways, as well as to small business options, and helps people make more informed decisions about their futures and be engaged and excited once on the job.—Contributed by Al Audette at Building Industry Association of Washington in Tumwater, Washington 

Policymakers will note that many of our recommendations mirror existing ways the government currently supports small businesses or the introduction of new technology. While VR is a new technology and the industry is learning about it every day, there are familiar ways to bring small businesses into the conversation so they can benefit from the technology, even in the early days. 

We know VR is an effective, efficient, and scalable way to support small businesses in providing top-quality training for their employees. And we know that small businesses contribute greatly to the health of the U.S. economy, so maintaining a skilled, strong workforce is essential.