?By 2026, 25 percent of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, study or entertainment, according to research from Gartner released Feb. 7, 2022. But another key contribution by the metaverse will likely be helping companies advance their workplace agendas, say HR professionals.
“The metaverse opens a window of possibilities,” said Richard Lobo, the Bengaluru, India-based executive vice president and head of HR at Infosys, one of the world’s largest outsourcing and IT services companies. He noted that the metaverse isn’t only for technology employers—it also will benefit industries that rely on physical infrastructure.
On a broader level, the metaverse could help solve India’s shortage of skilled younger workers, which exists despite the country having the world’s largest population of young people. For example, the metaverse could help bring high-quality education and training materials to young people living in smaller towns and rural areas who might lack access to them now.
“This technology … brings a lot of equity, in the sense that there’s a lot more availability and exposure to people, no matter which part of the country they’re in,” said Lobo. “This is what will change the whole landscape.”
What is the Metaverse?
For many people, the term itself remains fuzzy. “People confuse it with a new thing that’s coming,” said Lobo.
At Infosys, which has more than 300,000 employees, Lobo views the metaverse as a coming together of the virtual and real worlds that doesn’t require a virtual reality device. “It’s a continuation of the progress that technology is making,” he explained.
Lobo outlined five distinct areas in which Infosys is already leveraging the metaverse effectively:
1. Onboarding
For a long time, the typical onboarding process involved bringing new hires, especially those who just graduated from college, to the Infosys offices to experience the workplace.
“Over the last two to three years, we could not do this,” said Lobo. Instead, the company turned to the metaverse. The result: “We’ve been able to give people a virtual feel of what it’s like to enter an Infosys campus.”
Recruits and potential job candidates can get a feel of the workplace straight from their computer, which is different from merely watching a video about the company, said Lobo. In a video, control is with whoever is making it, since they decide what to show and what to leave out, he said.
In contrast, “[w]ith virtual reality, the control is with the user,” Lobo explained. The user can decide whether they want to explore a particular part of the campus or sit in on a classroom as an observer. “It gives you the feeling that you’re actually walking into that room and sitting there,” he said.
2. Engagement
Every year, Infosys offers a day when employees’ children come to the office, but during the pandemic, that wasn’t possible.
“So we created a Virtual Day, where people across the world could join in a fun world,” said Lobo. Around 100,000 children, including those of Infosys employees based outside of India, engaged in visual workshops and events.
“Adaptation of kids is much faster than everybody else” to these technologies, said Lobo. “That shows the potential.”
3. Health and Wellness
As with many other organizations, health and wellness have gained greater importance at Infosys in recent years.
“We found that we could connect people virtually quite well using the metaverse,” Lobo said. Employees are doing workouts together or meeting to discuss their hobbies. These get-togethers are different from a Microsoft Teams or Zoom meeting because avatars, rather than the employees, are shown on the screen, which makes things more fun. “It’s just an improvement,” said Lobo.
4. Training
“One of the biggest potentials for the metaverse is training,” said Lobo.
For instance, instructors could teach a doctor how to do surgery or an engineer how to fix difficult problems using virtual reality, he said. Another example comes from the aviation industry.
When learning how to fix aircraft engines, a company can create a virtual engine that is a “digital twin” of the physical engine, said Lobo. The “digital twin” behaves like a real engine, and anything done to the digital engine gives the same output as the physical one.
“It saves a lot of time and money if you use the metaverse for training, analysis and so forth,” said Lobo. “If I could train one engineer at a time on an engine, with this technology I could train many at the same time.”
At Infosys, officials are also exploring the possibility of training people managers using the metaverse. “For example, if I want to train a new manager on how to do a good performance appraisal, I could use this technology very brilliantly because I could create an avatar in front of the person,” said Lobo. The avatar would be like a guide, giving feedback on what was done well and what wasn’t, “so you can actually create simulations for managers to use,” he said.
5: Collaboration
The metaverse will also enhance collaboration, allowing remote meetings to become more productive, Lobo said. Right now, organizations approach remote meetings using Teams or Zoom, but that isn’t much different than a phone call. In contrast, the metaverse introduces avatars of employees writing on whiteboards and working together.
“I could be creating my drawing sitting in [Bengaluru] and somebody else could be adding to that drawing sitting in London, and it could all look like it’s happening on the same whiteboard,” said Lobo. It will take some time for the technology to be fully realized, and it will require a change in physical office spaces, including creating virtual meeting rooms. “But we are reconfiguring some of our office spaces now,” he said.
However, as with any new technology, organizations have to be conscious of what might go wrong, Lobo explained. For one, employers will need to watch out for impacts on employees’ health and wellness, such as fatigue.
“People only interacting with each other virtually—how long can you do it in a day?” Lobo said.
Organizations also should be mindful that some employees may be better at adapting to the technology then others. “We should not assume that this is a solution to everything,” he said.
Shefali Anand is a New Delhi-based journalist and former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. You can follow her on Twitter.