“Within the next two or three years,” Gates writes on his blog, “I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids […] to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars.”
Employees are excited about the metaverse. 76% of employees said they were keen to incorporate virtual worlds into their working lives as a way to bridge the cultural gaps left by remote work. While 66% said the metaverse could replicate sense of togetherness employees feel in the office.
Business leaders agreed. The top benefits of the metaverse for employers was helping teams engage, connect and collaborate (54%), creating a sense of belonging among distributed teams (54%), and improving work-life balance and reducing presenteeism (53%).
The pioneers of the business world have already completed their preparations.
Accenture launched its Nth Floor virtual campus before the pandemic and has since expanded it into an “enterprise metaverse.” The firm has created digital twins of many of the company’s physical offices, which it uses in welcoming new employees. This fiscal year, Accenture expects to use the Nth floor to onboard at least 150,000 new hires.
KPMG opened its “metaverse innovation hub” in June 2022, which it uses for collaboration, training and client meetings.
Last year, PwC’s Hong Kong office purchased a plot in The Sandbox, a 3D virtual world created for gamers. In addition, the company operates its own metaverse for global training, hiring and client meetings, says Emm Rivet, vice chair of PwC’s U.S. technology, media and telecommunications practice, who helps lead PwC’s metaverse initiative.
Some are designing spaces purely to create connections and friendships for new employees working from home. Others are creating spaces for collaboration between teams, such as BMW’s future factory. Hyundai developed a metaverse experience for training and as an R&D platform to understand just what an employee experience in the metaverse could look like. In addition, it has also launched Studio M, with the ambition to create a creative and flexible company culture featuring online concerts and augmented reality (AR) launch events. And let’s not forget KFC’s virtual employee training room where new employees head to a virtual kitchen and are taught to cook chicken ‘the KFC way’ by the Colonel himself.
Advantages of the metaverse
- The most notable advantage of the metaverse would is the fact that it completely makes geographic barriers irrelevant. Once you’re in the virtual world, your physical location doesn’t matter anymore and you are no longer bound by it.
- The Metaverse can help address remote work challenges by providing managers and employees with a virtual office where to meet and work. Though employees in the same office can interact with each other, they can’t share the real-time changes in their mind and their thoughts on a particular project. The traditional working environment just enables the staff to share their ideas at a particular time around the table, while the metaverse makes it possible for the employees to share their views and hear others anytime, anywhere there is an internet connection.
- Proponents argue that, done right, the virtual worlds of the metaverse will increase teleworker camaraderie, improve collaboration, speed up training, reduce the need for office space and make work a happier place in general.
Nowadays, metaverse is not just a buzzword on the internet, it is now becoming a reality. A new world is approaching, are you ready for it?