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Headquarters
Auckland, New Zealand
# of Employees
2200+
Industry
Retail & Grocery
Top challenges
Reduce the severity of manual handling injuries
Reduce ACC claims and operational costs of injury
Deliver sustainable behaviour change without disrupting the productivity of 90+ worksites
Briscoe Group is one of New Zealand’s largest retailers, with more than 90 worksites nationwide and a workforce of more than 2,200 team members. Across stores and distribution centres, manual handling injuries have been challenging, impacting employees’ wellbeing and productivity.
Incident data showed a gap between what employees knew about safe lifting techniques and how they applied those techniques in daily tasks.
This gap was contributing to lost productivity, increased absenteeism, compensation costs and was affecting employees’ wellbeing. Muscular or soft tissue injuries can linger and also make people susceptible to re-injury.
Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) claims revealed a significant financial and operational burden.
Another challenge was the scalability and the delivery method of the training. Employees were dispersed across 90+ worksites, with different work schedules, busy shifts, and high demands. Considering their operational and frontline needs, the new solution needed to be flexible, engaging, accessible anywhere, anytime, and able to effectively change behaviours.
Working in partnership with Provention, Capability Group reimagined Provention's existing First Move manual handling programme as an immersive virtual reality experience. The result, First Move VR, took content that was already practical, relevant, and well established and made it possible to deliver consistently and at scale across every site.
An analysis of incident data pinpointed the four movements most linked to injury risk: lifting, balance, twisting, and shoulders. And these became the focus of four 8-15 minute VR modules, built on the Uptale platform and delivered via Meta Quest headsets at every worksite.
The programme also accounted for the challenges of site-level logistics. The VR solution is designed to be easy to use, require minimal setup, and fit within existing training time commitments. It is also cost-efficient and repeatable, enabling training for new employees as they join the business.
Traditional instructor-led sessions were difficult to scale and often varied in consistency across sites. In contrast, the VR modules provide a repeatable, cost-effective solution that delivers consistent learning experiences to every team member on demand. Reinforcement through Axonify ensures that learning is reinforced and embedded over time, helping to create lasting behavioural change.
First Move VR was awarded Platinum at the LearnX Awards 2025 for its effectiveness, innovation and impact. The programme has set a new benchmark for manual handling safety training in the retail sector. Its combination of immersive design, scalability, and measurable impact positions it as a model for how compliance training can drive mindset shift, behaviour change and deliver long-term business value.
Download the case study for the full story.
"We, as a store, appreciate the enthusiasm the team has for using VR as an additional tool to our comprehensive training program. While our existing learning is an important suite of tools, the team find learning via VR more focused, as the headset blocks out distractions, so you take in more of the module and, in turn, absorb more of the training. The team are more likely to remember procedures and safety protocols when they experience them in a simulated, interactive way."
Sam Shepherd, Retail Manager at Briscoe Group's Albany store
We just wanted to say...
This website was made with love by the Capability Group design team in New Zealand ❤
Built meticulously by Tim, Maria, Courtney, Claire and the rest of the team.
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