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The remote distributed workplace of today is already vastly
different from what we could have imagined just a couple of years ago, but this
is nothing compared to the changes being ushered in by the metaverse.
The 3D internet and the technologies surrounding it promise
radical new levels of social connectedness, mobility, and collaboration inside
a virtual workplace that still sounds like science fiction to actually come
true.
“Imagine a world where you could have a beachside
conversation with your colleagues, take meeting notes while floating around a space
station, or teleport from your office in London to New York, all without taking
a step outside your front door,” invites Mark Purdy, an economics and
technology advisor writing in the Harvard Business Review.
The implications of the emerging metaverse for the world of
work have received little attention, he contends, yet companies everywhere need
to get ready or get bypassed by talent and innovation.
He identifies four major ways future work will morph. These
are: new immersive forms of team collaboration; the emergence of AI-enabled
colleagues; the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition; and the
eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new work roles.
I confess to being deeply skeptical that many of these ideas
will actually contribute to be a better working environment. Being stuck inside
a virtual office interacting with an AI-bot seems neither fun nor productive,
nor particularly conducive to great team building and, in fact, seems to mask
the drudgery of work, serving only to cut the costs of companies spending money
on real-life infrastructure to house their workers and to facilitate
round-the-clock surveillance.
But Purdy has amassed quite a collection of activity in
support of his more outlandish claims, which do seem to point in the direction
of significant change.
So, let’s take a look.
Teamwork and Collaboration in the Metaverse
The metaverse promises to bring new levels of social
connection, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work. For
evidence we can look to NextMeet based in India and described as an
avatar-based immersive reality platform.
With it, employee “digital avatars” can pop in and out of
virtual offices and meeting rooms in real-time, walk up to a virtual help desk,
give a live presentation, relax with colleagues in a networking lounge, or roam
an exhibition using a customizable avatar.
Participants access the virtual environment via their
desktop computer or mobile device, pick or design their avatar, and then use
keyboard buttons to navigate the space: arrow keys to move around, double click
to sit on a chair, and so forth.
Speaking to Purdy, Pushpak Kypuram, founder-director of
NextMeet, gives the example of employee onboarding: “If you’re onboarding 10
new colleagues and show or give them a PDF document to introduce the company,
they will lose concentration after 10 minutes. What we do instead is have them
walk along a 3D hall or gallery, with 20 interactive stands, where they can
explore the company. You make them want to walk the virtual hall, not read a
document.”
Other metaverse companies are emphasizing workplace
solutions that help counter video meeting fatigue and the social
disconnectedness of remote work.
One of them is PixelMax, a UK-based startup that is
developing technology that mimics the social interactions you’d experience in a
real office. For example, it facilitates those chance encounters with
colleagues in the corridors or water cooler and provides a “panoramic sweep” of
the office floor so you can quickly see where colleagues are located (and who
to avoid….)
The ultimate vision, according to PixelMax co-founder Andy
Sands, is to enable work-based avatars to port between virtual worlds.
“It’s about community building, conversations and
interactions,” he explains. “We want to enable worker avatars to move between a
manufacturing world and an interior design world, or equally take that avatar
and go and watch a concert in Roblox and Fortnite.”
Purdy argues that virtual workplaces can provide a better
demarcation between home and work life, “creating the sensation of walking into
the workplace each day and then leaving and saying goodbye to colleagues when
your work is done.”
What’s more a virtual office doesn’t have to mimic most
people’s experience of a “drab, uniform corporate environment” when you can
have a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world?
Outlandish? VR platform Gather is already offering
‘dream offices’ that allows employees and organizations to ‘build their own
office’ whether that’s a “Space-Station Office” with views of planet Earth or
“The Pirate Office,” complete with ocean views, a Captain’s Cabin, and a
Forecastle Lounge for socializing.
Introducing Your Digital Colleague
It’s almost a given that future work (and social)
interactions will be carried out by a digital avatar of ourselves.
Increasingly, these digi-selves will be joined by an array of automated
digi-colleagues — “highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots.”
One example is UneeQ, a “digital humans” creator
behind Nola, a digital shopping assistant, and Rachel, an always-on
mortgage adviser.
AI-bots are also developing human-like emotions (using
expression rendering, gaze direction, and real-time gesturing) “to create
lifelike, emotionally-responsive digital humans.
Purdy reckons these AI agents will act as advisors and
assistants, doing much of the heavy lifting of work in the metaverse and, in
theory, freeing up human workers for more productive, value-added tasks. In
theory.
Ultimately, they could force humans out of work because
“they don’t take coffee breaks, can be deployed in multiple locations at once
and can be deployed to more repetitive, dull, or dangerous work in the
metaverse.”
Faster Learning in the Metaverse
The aspect of virtual work life, which is already taking off
and proving its worth, is in training and skills development. Purdy claims
further advances and greater adoption will “drastically compress the time
needed to develop and acquire new skills.”
“In the metaverse, every object — a training manual,
machine, or product, for example — could be made to be interactive, providing
3D displays and step-by-step guides. VR role-play exercises and simulations
will become common, enabling worker avatars to learn in highly realistic, ‘game
play’ scenarios.”
There is research in the piece “VoRtex Metaverse Platform
for Gamified Collaborative Learning” that suggests virtual-world training can
offer important advantages over traditional instructor or classroom-based
training, as it provides a greater scope for visually demonstrating concepts, a
greater opportunity for learning by doing (the game becomes the lesson), and
overall higher engagement through immersion in games and problem-solving
through “quest-based” methods.
New Roles in the Metaverse Economy
Just as the internet has brought new roles that barely
existed 20 years ago — such as digital marketing managers, social media
advisors, and cyber-security profs — so, too, will the metaverse likely bring a
vast swathe of new roles that we can only imagine today: “avatar conversation
designers, holoporting travel agents to ease mobility across different virtual
worlds, metaverse digital wealth management and asset managers,” says Purdy.
Not to mention, the plethora of creative activities geared
around the creator economy. IMVU is an avatar-based social network
with more than seven million users per month, has thousands of creators who
make and sell their own virtual products for the metaverse — designer outfits,
furniture, make-up, music, stickers, pets — generating around $7 million per
month in revenues.
Challenges and Imperatives
Significant obstacles could still stymie any or all of this.
The computing infrastructure and power requirements alone need to be upgraded
for everyone to participate. The metaverse also brings a maze of regulatory and
HR compliance issues, for example around bullying or harassment in the virtual
world.
Purdy has the following guidance for companies that want to
take heed.
Make portability of skills a priority: For workers,
there will be concerns around portability of skills and qualifications: “Will
experience or credentials gained in one virtual world or enterprise be relevant
in another, or in my real-world life?” Employers, educators, and training
institutions can create more liquid skills by agreeing upon properly certified
standards for skills acquired in the metaverse, with appropriate accreditation
of training providers.
Be truly hybrid: Enterprises must create integrated
working models that allow employees to move seamlessly between physical,
online, and 3D virtual working styles, using the consumer technologies native
to the metaverse: avatars, gaming consoles, VR headsets, hand-track controllers
with haptics and motion control that map the user’s position in the real world
into the virtual world.
Yet this is only the start. Companies like Kat VR are
developing virtual locomotion technologies such as leg attachments and
treadmills to create realistic walking experiences.
Learn upwards: In designing their workplace metaverses,
companies should look particularly to the younger generation, many of whom have
grown up in a gaming, 3D, socially connected environment. “Reverse
intergenerational learning — where members of the younger generation coach and
train their older colleagues — could greatly assist the spread of
metaverse-based working among the overall workforce.”
Only in passing does Purdy mention that “the metaverse will
only be successful if it is deployed as a tool for employee engagement and
experiences, not for supervision and control.”
While we might concur that the future of work is bound to
change with the introduction of many more digital online components, the idea
that all of this is progress is worth further examination.
