Erste Bank, headquartered in Vienna, serves over 16 million clients across seven countries. Known for its focus on innovation, the bank sought new methods to prepare employees for high-stress situations like bank robberies and other security situations, aiming to enhance employee resilience and prevent PTSD.
Traditional training methods posed several challenges:
These challenges culminated in a distinct lack of scalability. With participation issues, and scaling costs due to expanding operations and locations, on-site training became a bottleneck.
Erste Bank implemented VR training with scenarios simulating real bank robberies and other high-stress situations. Employees used their smartphones with foldable VR goggles, allowing them to practice de-escalation techniques and proper security procedures. This meant that training could be deployed at any branch at any time, then practiced repeatedly. The VR training was designed to be engaging and realistic, using 360-degree videos filmed in actual bank branches. This way, there would be no disconnect between applying what employees learn in VR to real life.
"The VR glasses and the 360-degree view make it much easier to immerse yourself in a scenario and feel much more realistic compared to educational videos or roleplaying games. Especially when it comes to escalations and real threat situations, which are difficult to simulate in conventional workshops with your own colleagues. Every decision I make in the VR scenario has an impact on the further storyline, contrary to the rigid linear process of a training video." - David Gezzele, Head of Learning & Development, Erste Bank
Learn more about how Erste Bank uses VR training for fraud prevention in our interview with Stefanie Schoder (Teamlead Learning at Erste Bank), and Stefanie Trapp (Fraud Specialist at Erste Bank).
Erste Bank achieved its initial goals and continues to train using VR to this day, developing new scenarios each year:
”The collaboration with Warp VR was really great, because we worked together as a team. We knew exactly what we wanted to achieve and it was clear who was doing what. For me as Head of Learning & Development, it's important to get really good support from the very beginning until the end. So far it's been a great success story regarding collaboration and most important the outcome.” - David Gezzele, Head of Learning & Development, Erste Bank
Learn more about how Erste Bank uses VR training in our interview with David Gezzele (Head of Learning & Development at Erste Bank), and our talk at AWE EU 2023 - How Erste Bank is Using Gamification and Storytelling in VR Training.
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