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Add engagement to the list of employer concerns in 2023.
Back in March, a Challenger, Gray & Christmas survey found that more than 80% of HR executives were concerned about talent leaving their organizations, with many citing a lack of engagement with off-site workers as a pain point.
Months later, a conference board survey found similar decrease in commitment levelsalthough the organization noted little variation between remote, hybrid and on-site workers on this issue.
Whether or not on-site presence really factors into engagement, it’s clear that many employers are thinking about how to improve retention—of that engagement is an essential component – in a pandemic-driven environment of flexibility.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and augmented reality technology company Reality Labs, believes the answer to this question could lie in the Metaverse. The term describes a proposed, immersive version of the Internet that would integrate virtual reality, augmented reality and other technologies.
The company has already demonstrated potential use cases for its tech, perhaps most prominently through its Horizon Workrooms product. For the uninitiated, workrooms can be thought of as a video game-like simulation of an in-person meeting in which team members are represented by digital avatars.
Earlier this month, Meta publishes the results from a targeted sample business survey they said was carried out with more than 2,000 employees and 400 business leaders across the UK and the US. 2022. Additionally, 65% of employees said they were more likely to stay in jobs where they had access to AR or VR.
The results show that employees have expectations not only of their employers’ technological investments, but also of the inclusion of communities in an increasingly virtual work environment, said Ade Ajayi, head of global sales at Reality Labs, in an interview. But current remote and hybrid work processes, such as video calls, may not be enough.
“One of the findings is that we see that employees feel happiest when they are included at work, and these employees say that video calling interferes with that,” Ajayi said. “They don’t get the same experience of feeling included in the workplace.”
Instead, teams can turn to applications like Workrooms to experience virtual interactions in new ways. Ajayi said his team at Reality Labs periodically meets with the company’s Quest VR devices. The experience is very different from a video call, he noted, because users can interact with each other’s avatars and use visual aids like whiteboards to communicate.
He compared immersive tech in the 2020s to cell phones in the early 2000s. “The expectation is not that you’re on your phone 24/7 or throughout your work hours,” Ajayi said. “There are times when using your cell phone is the most productive for what you’re trying to do. The same will happen with virtual reality [and] augmented reality.”
The HR reality
It’s important for employers to recognize the gaps that exist when using the collaboration tools that make remote and hybrid work possible, according to JP Gownder, VP and principal analyst at Forrester. These tools can also have drawbacks. Gownder said psychological researchers have found evidence of a demonstrable user fatigue experience, for example with video calls.
Furthermore, the emergence of 3D spaces where employees can interact with the types of tools offered by workrooms and similar platforms is promising, Gownder added; “It’s designed to solve problems that aren’t easily solved otherwise.”
But there are several hurdles employers must consider before bringing Metaverse into the fold. VR, eg has already been employed in a number of training-specific scenarios, but Gownder said companies are generally far from the point at which it would make sense for employees to transition to spending a large part of their days in virtual spaces.
“For the jump they have to go from using Slack or Teams or Zoom to using an avatar in a 3D space, whether it’s with a headset or not, there’s just more of a learning curve and lack of familiarity,” Gownder said. “It’s a pretty exotic idea at this point for most people.”
Metaverse integration could appeal to different groups of workers, such as those with more technological experience or those operating in teams that already have a degree of digital collaboration in place, he added.
Before any major workplace integration, however, HR teams need to ensure that employees are able to become familiar with the idea of digital collaboration across the board, Gownder said. They may also need to onboard workers and metaverse solutions and ensure that change management policies are in place to ensure a smooth transition – not unlike those used during the move to remote work.
A gradual evolution
Although there are countless discussions among employers about the potential of AR, VR and the metaverse, many of these conversations have yet to produce actual strategic plans for adoption, according to John Kostoulas, vice president analyst and HR tech specialist at Gartner. In addition, Kostoulas said he expects the adoption of tech in the workplace to happen gradually through the middle of the decade, rather than all at once.
Interest in applications such as virtual meetings has seen relative growth in the broad adoption of remote work, Kostoulas added, although this interest does not necessarily result in the adoption of VR, AR or Metaverse technologies specifically. HR teams must think about issues such as cost and the time required to customize solutions to meet the specific needs of an organization.
“Many organizations are trying to make their onboarding processes more virtual, but that leads to more inquiries about the use of VR or AR in onboarding? Not necessarily,” said Kostoulas.
The personal component of hybrid work can help relieve some of the tensions that can occur when employees work off-site. “Sometimes people make it into this dichotomy between full-time remote or full-time in the office, and the truth is if you’re trying to build a culture of trust, you can do that one day a week,” Gownder said.
In the meantime, employers can find specific use cases for the Metaverse that will make sense over time. From a sustainability standpoint, for example, employers could allow virtual meetings instead of employees participating in resource-intensive company trips, Gownder said. He noted that, like SMS and email, VR, AR and the Metaverse can be considered accretive; the Metaverse could fill a space similar to Slack or WhatsApp.
Employers, he added, need not be in a rush to adopt metaverse technologies. Instead, they might start with a VR or AR training solution, or a similar use case that has seen more extensive study.
