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People Management Function Meets the Omniverse
July 11, 2023
The Omniverse-Enabled Workplace of Future
Instance 1: Imagine your future workplace — a place where you could engage in beachside chats with your teammates, take meeting notes while floating around a space station, or teletravel between your offices in Dubai, UAE and San Francisco, USA.
Instance 2: Are you hard-pressed on time since you have back-to-back multiple meetings scheduled on the same day? Instead, send your AI-enabled digital twin to reduce your work burden.
Both the above instances offer a sneak peek into the future of work provided by “The Omniverse.”
The Omniverse is something that tech titans and visionaries are already vouching for. In one of his recent blog posts, Bill Gates predicted that virtual meetings would evolve from 2D camera image grids to the Omniverse, a 3D world with digital avatars. There is an implicit assumption that people would use their Omniverse avatar to meet their co-workers in a virtual setting that simulates sharing a meeting room with them.
As Omniverse introduces a new way of working to the business world, it has significant implications for People Management personnel spearheading the transition. Besides having access to the technologies required for change implementation, they should also ensure that the workplace of the future is designed with people in mind.
Opportunities Omniverse Presents to the People Management Function
Omniverse provides the virtual world with a new degree of mobility, collaboration, and social connectedness. It is all set to change the future world of work in the following ways:
- Development of Immersive and Hands-Free Team Collaboration Tools: Team structure shall undergo a substantial transformation in the Omniverse workspace. In a post Covid-19 environment, organizations worldwide have already adapted to a hybrid work model. By fostering interactions through avatars and hands-free devices rather than Smartphones and computers, the Omniverse will make collaborations and dialogues more immersive.
- Acceleration of Learning and Skill Acquisition via Gamified Technologies and Virtualization: To survive in a Omniverse workplace, employees will need to upskill themselves through training to be hands-on with the environment. From an organizational standpoint, it also implies investment in emerging technologies. Similarly, Human Resources can leverage virtual reality to provide interactive, immersive learning experiences through real-life scenarios in VR format.
- Talent Acquisition: Human Resource professionals can utilize strategies such as conducting virtual recruitment fairs to communicate with prospective employers and obtain access to a real-time presentation of the future organization’s work culture.
- Safety & Inclusivity of the Work Environment: Omniverse brings together team members and employers to connect and exchange ideas in a virtual space. It helps establish a sense of community within an organization by offering tools and features that facilitate the formation of an inclusive and safe work environment.
Is It All Too Good to be True?
While the ability of employees to portray themselves as avatars may level the playing field, a few other aspects might promote division and unfairness. The Omniverse requires a large bandwidth, which is not always available. Furthermore, this might fuel ageist agendas at the workplace as the tech-savvy younger generations could have an advantage over the older generations.
Another subject under consideration is cybersecurity. Regulators are hesitant to impose restrictions as they lack an understanding of the Omniverse and its economy. Therefore, questions about employee safety and data privacy arise. Before enabling it for the workforce, Human Resources Leaders should navigate through the Omniverse to assess the means and ends of protecting employees against abuse and harassment in the virtual world.
