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When home improvement company Premium Service Brands wanted to coach franchisees in hiring and sales remotely during the coronavirus pandemic, it tried to replicate classroom learning via video call. But, says the company’s Vice President of Learning Deb Jewell, people didn’t always remember what they had learned online to translate it into real-life scenarios.
Premium Service Brands owns brands including handyman business House Doctors and decorating firm 360 Painting and decided to create a virtual reality platform to provide a “hands-on” way for franchisees to practice what they’d learned, Jewell told CNBC via phone. Instead of spending over an hour on a video call with an accountant explaining a balance sheet, which some trainees found “pretty boring,” the company created a financial simulation based on real-life scenarios.
“They look at financial statements, they try to project the impact on their financials of decisions that they make … They then get a new round of financial statements that reflect that decision, and they go…
