Metaverse to change the future of work

Metaverse is virtually shaping the world of work. It creates more opportunities for workers in and outside of the office as well as makes some jobs a lot easier. The metaverse promises to bring new levels of social connectedness, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work. The metaverse is poised to reshape the world of work in at least four major ways: new immersive forms of team collaboration; the emergence of new digital, AI-enabled colleagues; the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition through virtualization and gamified technologies; and the eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new enterprises and work roles.

The metaverse also opens up new possibilities to rethink the office and work environment, introducing elements of adventure, spontaneity, and surprise. A virtual office doesn’t have to be a drab, uniform corporate environment downtown; rather why not a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world? Our work colleagues in the metaverse will not be limited to the avatars of our real-world colleagues. Increasingly, we will be joined by an array of digital colleagues — highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots.

The metaverse could also revolutionize training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills. While still in its early stages, the emergent metaverse provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning, while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home.

We are seeing how the Metaverse can help build business brands and how it’ll bring the opportunity for the job seekers. Metaverses are immersive 3D digital worlds based on virtual reality gaming experiences. Multiplayer online games such as Fortnite already have many of the elements that make up a metaverse, including the ability to buy and sell digital inventory using tokens and crypto currencies.

Many of the world’s largest fashion brands, for example, are already actively experimenting with digital-only clothing collections which are “worn” by influencers. Metaverses are more expensive than closed online games – they allow people to enter using their real-life identities and use these platforms to work as well as shop, play and hang out.

For organisations, metaverses promise to create more realistic, and therefore more productive, immersive meetings made possible with 3D virtual reality headsets. Microsoft is already rolling out Mesh for Microsoft Teams to make online collaborations more fun and effective through helping people connect in less impersonal ways, for example, through sharing body language, having water cooler conversations and engaging more in team meetings.

The distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ is absolutely critical in terms of understanding how the internet is evolving, and thereby changing the very nature of work. Many metaverses will be open and decentralised means that every organisation will have to understand how their current business models, even if they are digital, will be disrupted. 

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA