Going Back to the Future with the Metaverse for Learning and Teamwork

“It (the metaverse) is creating value for enterprise companies and organizations that have the biggest challenges around … remote work and hybrid work challenges,” Kaplan said. When the pandemic hit, he stated there was a massive influx of interest in the metaverse, and in a period of 12 months, the team at Virbela grew from 20 to 150 people just to support new demand. Noting these rapid changes, Kaplan said he believes the future for knowledge and digital workers does not involve having them return to corporate offices full-time. And although there are benefits of having in-house employees, they don’t necessarily have the desire to go back.

Discovering a Virbela Virtual Campus with Avatars

Frederic Lucas-Conwell is the CEO and Co-Founder of the human capital management company Growth Resources, Inc., publisher and distributor of the GRI—the Growth Resources and Indicators. At the first session of GRI Summit 2022, Kaplan did an on-screen demonstration of what it looks like to walk through a Virbela-generated metaverse campus, and Lucas-Conwell’s avatar met Kaplan there.

As their avatars went from building to building, Lucas-Conwell discussed the metaverse with Kaplan and was interested in how it might be able to solve some of the leading issues companies face related to teamwork, leadership development, and DEI.

“It’s a different experience than Zoom. It looks like what we have here provides a very different experience from a psychological standpoint,” said Lucas-Conwell “Because you don’t see the person, you don’t see what they look like, you don’t see their age, and you don’t see their gender.”

Kaplan agreed. He said with the metaverse experiences his company creates, some of the personnel challenges found in the traditional workplace are actually being eliminated. Users of Virbela’s virtual reality platforms can connect at scale across global regions and operate in spaces that are secure and privatized to their organizations only. Everyone online is identifiable by real credentials and their interactions are traceable, features that add credibility and transparency to communications.

At the same time, each user has the benefit of being represented by a unique avatar, which can be less stressful and intimidating than appearing on screen in real life. At Virbela, Kaplan said his team works in virtual offices five days a week. He appreciates that he can personalize his own office space and if employees have questions, they can approach him in his virtual office and speak with him directly. It’s a more synchronous conversation versus an employee messaging him on Slack, and he feels more connected.

New Potential for Teamwork and Leadership in Virtual Spaces

From a human resources perspective, the metaverse has potential to provide immense benefits for both an employer and employees alike. Activities such as job fairs, hiring events, interviews, and employee training are just some of the things possible in the space. And according to Kaplan, hosting these activities in the metaverse is a great way to demonstrate that your company is innovative and has better technology than others—a competitive advantage.

Lucas-Conwell agreed and said he thinks much more immersive experiences in terms of organizational and managerial needs can occur in the metaverse. For example, from a virtual meeting space, he could project slide decks on walls, comment on those slides, invite people to make comments, and share screens. There is potential, he stated, to learn more about people and teamwork, mentoring and coaching, and growing more resilient organizations.

There’s a different kind of value to having a virtual space open for employees, according to Kaplan. It’s an unobtrusive way to visualize each other. And since team members from any geography have access to the space, he said a diversity of perspective is gained, which drives innovation.

“You can walk up to the leadership floor, knock on the virtual door, and say hello to the CEO. You can do that in this environment,” Kaplan said. “You can actually create personal human-centric relationships at scale because of the accessibility of the platform from anywhere in the world.”

Cost Savings Proven for Business Enterprises in Virtual Reality

When it comes to cost savings and scalability, there’s something profoundly different about what the metaverse can do for an organization in terms of conferences and events. Historically, people have always met face-to-face; conference center rooms had to be rented, flights arranged, and hotel rooms booked. On top of those expenses, there were meal costs, taxi fares, and other usual travel expenses. Whether or not the pandemic changed this in-person dynamic, organizations choosing to go virtual with activities are achieving significant cost savings in addition to gaining better participant reach that’s able to cross time zones and geographies.

On this note, Kaplan gave an example of the value realized by a client when they went virtual:

“There was a 1,000-person sales kickoff in Europe. They told me they usually spent $250,000 just on the event planner. And then hotel and conference rooms for 1,000 people; it’s $1 million dollars in general travel and hotel accommodations for 1,000 people,” he said. “Our entry-level campus starts at $250,000 a year, and that’s for a capacity of about 500. You have paid for a year’s worth of access, so you could do that event every day of the year because you have access 24-7 to the campus, plus you have all the other values.”

GRI Envisions the Future of Hybrid and Remote Work

Stating that large companies will have some big advantages and benefits, Lucas-Conwell envisioned how organizations could begin using the metaverse very quickly. He said if a larger client of Growth Resources, Inc. asked, his company could run their GRI presentations and sessions and gauge discussions in a different way than how they’ve been doing them through Zoom and in-person. It would be a different learning and teamwork experience.

In consideration of what participants learned at this future-focused session of GRI Summit 2022, Lucas-Conwell concluded that organizations are now operating in a world open to hybrid work, but also in a world where employees need better well-being initiatives, understanding, and reflection from their leaders and colleagues. And the metaverse may just be the place for all of it to happen in.