How Metaverse Leverages Employee Engagement and Trust
We are already in a space where the digital world is more real than imagined. Gaming, shopping, education, entertainment, or fitness; there have been evident advancements through Metaverse, and sooner it will bring significant shifts to the world of work.
Connect, communication and collaboration become three primary elements in creating a culture of trust and building an engaged working environment. Humans, more than anything else, have always appreciated in-person connections.
According to the conventional ways, trust strengthens automatically when one can meet, see, and observe as it is authentic. Conceptually not much has changed, and people so much want to be in the literal real world to experience the actual engaged workplace and workforce.
The Covid-19 phase triggered the WFH model, which has not just found a somewhat permanent place in many organizations but has also given a thought to ponder whether we will ever come back to the office in total capacity.
Call it acceptance level or the need of the hour, almost everybody understands that we are moving more towards the tech world where the virtual world is pepping up to build a digital yet real space for everyone to witness and participate.
Organizations know that getting everybody physically to a place may practically not be possible, and having everyone over a video call won’t be that impactful knowing that many won’t join, and most of them would not even want to put the camera on.
So, what’s the solution? Probably, Metaverse. A place for everyone to exist, which may not be real but so much LIFELIKE, where everyone can see, feel, get involved, and exist meaningfully with a role and an Avatar.
A platform that allows employees to meet and greet, socialize with each other, organize training sessions and even sit together to gossip, all without actually meeting in person, is the most fundamental need of the current times. Organizations have already indicated how disconnected people are from and with this remote or WFH model.
The Metaverse brings in the hope and future of the semi-real virtual phase, which is practically helping organizations to create an engaged and trusted place to belong. This is how and why the Metaverse is believed to be the future:
- It is a Lifelike Experience: A space that is visually so real where your Avatar can walk around, take part in meetings, meet people on the go, and most importantly, have a coffee or a water cooler gossip break, bringing in the life to the virtual world. With limitations on physical meetings and travel, this will help the organization create a REAL Virtual space for everyone to come together, connect, and coexist as a team.
- Seamless: It enables an environment that seamlessly blends the digital world with the physical world. There is a difference for sure for all apparent reasons, but whatever best can be offered to bring these two worlds together is made possible with the inception of Metaverse.
- Imaginable Yet Relatable: It allows employees to create their own experience, avatars, space, and gossip group as per their comfort, convenience, and preferences. If one can imagine it, it’s doable through Metaverse. Everything was designed and planned with a physical workspace by enabling functions in many organizations’ workstations. Now, Metaverse gives immense flexibility and options for people to explore and define a workplace of their choice.
- More Reliable: Currently, when using virtual platforms while assessing an employee’s behavior, the analytics are limited to psychometric tests, survey data, and additional parameters. With the Metaverse, we can better map how our people react, behave, make decisions, and prioritize their work under a given or challenging scenario. The data in this format is much more authentic as one can actually see and monitor the mirror/avatar.
- Connected and Immersive: Humans have always interacted more comfortably with faces than icons or screens. We all have seen how challenging it is to ensure that everybody on a VC puts on the camera. Not everybody is comfortable for various reasons, but with the Metaverse Avatars, life becomes easy for all, where virtual representations of individuals – that mirror their body language as they speak make it more accurate, believable and connected. Employees go for a walk in the garden or organize a meeting on a spaceship. The format and platform are much more inclusive, open, flexible, and innovative for individuals to imagine, explore and make it closest to real.
- Reduces Geographical and Hierarchical Boundaries Further: Employees get equal access; no matter where they are, they all can be sitting in a common room and discussing strategies, finding solutions, or just meeting. One can meet anybody and share space with any individual or group in the system, which significantly reduces the barrier of culture, location, hierarchy, and role. For a front liner, a chess game after work with the Exec team member is so quickly done.
- Enables Real-Time Learning and Connection: One can be where the mentor is and see what that individual is doing; learn, participate, ask questions, or observe. An individual can literally follow the mentor/trainer to learn much more realistic.
Building trust and creating an engaged organization are as subjective as objective, theoretical as practical, and emotional as binary. Technology has enabled data and all the linked processes though the same.
Today’s Connects and collaborations are much more effective, flexible, faster, and nimble, but the emotional side that was getting highly compromised will be addressed by the Metaverse to an extent. No, I am not saying that it will replace the Human aspect, but enhance it in the right way.
The pandemic has accelerated the digital shift taking place in businesses. Timely digital awareness, adoption, and implementation can fast track the productivity of companies. The Metaverse is the future of work, providing a pocket for endless, interconnected virtual communities using VR, AR, and MR.
The metaverse platform will be an effective, engaging, and enabling experience. The word “metaverse” means “beyond the universe,” which literally holds that capability. Organizations should start small, monitor, and explore to find the best fit for the organization and people; there is enough time as we are at a very nascent stage today.
By 2024, it’s estimated that the metaverse market will be worth $800 billion. Metaverse will much sooner be the NEXT NORMAL thing in technology.
Many traditional ways have already become obsolete and ineffective; organizations will have to prepare well to explore beyond defined and tagged spaces by creating experiences that are Retainable, Memorable, Immersive, and Captivating.
The journey ahead can be labeled as limitless and endless as we find ways to decode if DIGITAL IS MORE REAL OR REAL IS MORE DIGITAL.
