Enter the Heroverse

If you think of a hero as someone who runs toward, rather than away-from, a critical situation then Human Resource Leaders have been major heroes over the past 3 years – but it seems the running must continue.

The COVID pandemic resulted in major changes to work patterns – the need to continue to service customers but often from remote locations.?Human Resource leaders worked alongside technology teams to enable this – while also taking actions to mental health of their colleagues who were now meeting customer needs without the human interaction we all crave.

The impact of COVID on business and society will be debated for many years to come.?Right now, however, you see significant challenges for businesses that can be related back to COVID.?

Challenges of our times

As many employees re-evaluated their lives, the so called ‘Great Resignation’ has become a challenge that Human Resource Leaders are continuing to manage.?Finding replacement employees is one challenge but they need to be rapidly trained to deliver against your customer promise.

Consumer price inflation is difficult for households and businesses alike.?There are suggestions that it may result in some workers who took early retirement during the pandemic returning to the workforce.?Sharon White – CEO of UK retailer John Lewis – is encouraging retirees to return to the workforce to help address worker shortages.?The potential of a ‘Great Unretirement’ has even been suggested.

Tempting these individuals back into the workplace will require careful engagement and the teaching of new skills.?For retailers and their customer facing teams, this is tough due to ever-increasing consumer expectations.?

A new resource?

Retailers may need to look beyond people with existing retail experience to address their needs – another challenge Human Resource Leaders must run toward.

Traditional approaches of training customer facing retail teams are rarely engaging and rely on ‘checkbox’ type scenarios where customer interactions cannot be practiced.

Continuing to leverage these approaches is likely to result in difficulty meeting customer expectations but also limits your ability to train employees with limited retail experience – thus restricting your potential hiring pool.

What if there was an approach to training your customer facing teams that is highly engaging, enables interactive practice of customer interaction in a safe environment while maximising skill retention.

This would help you to rapidly onboard new hires – irrespective of previous experience – but also help them to learn and retain the skills they need to continue to meet the promises you make to your customer.

Enter the Metaverse

Barely a week goes by without a media article regarding the ‘metaverse’.?Organisations are considering how to use it to provide a new revenue stream or channel for customer engagement.?

While metaverse for marketing, sales, games and entertainment are all discussed at length, the opportunity to use metaverse to train employees gets little attention.?

As well as providing an engaging environment for employees to learn, practice and retain the skills they need it also has another huge benefit – organisational learning.

There are concerns that metaverse environments could become problematic. some commentators are predicting a new ‘wild west’.?The need to learn how to manage and operate in a metaverse environment is becoming critical.?

Experimenting internally, with your own teams, before you create your customer facing metaverse is a safe way learn.?The ‘metaverse of employee training’, however means your organisation can learn how best to operate and manage a metaverse environment – prior to monetizing - whilst improving the skills of your customer facing teams.

The metaverse is still in early days – Gartner suggest it will be 10 years before it is mainstream.?Aside from the need for organisations to learn how to operate and manage, two other things are clear – the requirements in terms of security and computing power will be significant – making cloud the perfect technology.?Microsoft is working with many retailers on their metaverse future - building accelerators and helping them to plan to maximise return on investment .?

Understand how Microsoft help customers like you and read more about Microsoft's pioneering metaverse work here.

(This blog was written in conjunction with Mike Edmonds who I would like to thank for his input and thinking.)