Human Resources & The Metaverse

As?June came to an end, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees about an ambitious new initiative. The future of the company would go far beyond its current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them. Instead, he said, Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — a world known as the metaverse. (credit – theverge.com)

We already know that the race to build technologies supporting the metaverse has already started and so have transactions amounting to millions.

Believe it or not, Metaverse is here already!

Simply put, a Metaverse is a digital space represented by digital representations of people, places, and things. In other words, it’s a “digital world” with real people represented by digital objects.

In many ways, Microsoft Teams or Zoom is already a form of a Metaverse. You are “there” in the room, but you may be a static image, an avatar, or a live video. So Metaverse is a broader context for “bringing people together.” (credit – joshbersin.com)

Besides Meta and Microsoft, Accenture has jumped in big on AR and VR calling it Accenture Extended Reality (XR) Services.

Being an HR, I am organically connecting dots between Metaverse and Human Resources and the opportunities that I see ahead.

With Covid and “new ways of working” much of our work, interactions, meetings, and employee experience is moved virtually challenging organizations to think out of the box to provide an effective employee experience.

Adoption of Metaverse gives answers to many “future of work” related questions that leaders, HR, and board members are trying to answer.

Metaverse with its capabilities of bringing people and experiences together anywhere, virtually can solve many possible people engagement challenges.

Hiring – Talent Attraction & Hiring Experience

Let me begin with Hiring which in almost all organizations is virtual now. With Metaverse, organizations can go many extra miles forward and provide a digital AR (Augmented Reality) experience to candidates where they can experience how the organization “looks like”, experience “a day at work” or even view a past event, company briefing, or get an immersive employee engagement experience. Candidates can meet other live employees or their recorded avatars and understand more about the company culture, values. The list is long, and possibilities are endless.

Meetings, interactions, manager-employee performance reviews

Metaverse is a perfect virtual platform to have virtual conversations. The conversation can be scheduled anywhere in the world and in any setting giving a massive boost to the experience. There are so many addons that can be plugged in that makes interactions more inclusive, dynamic, and engaging.

There’s so much more that metaverse can do to have great conversations.

Recognition

Why limit to recognition being given via vouchers, dollar points, or them just being “social”. Recognition in metaverse goes beyond just the traditional ways of recognizing talent. Recognition can appear on employee’s avatar profile, could appear on team dashboard, employee can shop “virtually”, go on a virtual holiday.

It’s like collecting coins and scoring high.

Engagement Activities

Imagine starting your day with virtual yoga and a meditation class. A virtual off-site where all team members from all parts of the world can join. A boxing match with your boss ??

Overall Employee Experience

Metaverse can enhance employee experience at every touchpoint. While the list is endless, employees can have a real time AR & VR enabled experiences in processes such as counselling, off-boarding, helpdesks, trainings/learnings, coaching and more.

In smaller or larger scope, organizations must start thinking of going beyond chat bots, zoom, webex and start thinking on creating a more immersive experience in the metaverse.

Thank you for reading and looking forward to interesting perspectives and comments.

Regards,

Laksh Sharma

Photo credit – Time Magazine

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