Employees want their bosses to embrace the metaverse to make hybrid working more effective, a survey suggests.
The call for more immersive, virtual technologies to be used to bridge the gap between people working in offices and those remotely was backed by 52 per cent of the 2,000 people in the UK polled by the US technology company Owl Labs.
Nearly two thirds (65 per cent) of the respondents felt an “office metaverse” would boost flexibility, while just over a third believed it would help reduce bias in favour of those working regularly in the office.
While the term has entered the mainstream with Facebook’s rebranding as Meta and the popularity of computer games such as Fortnite and Roblox and social worlds like Decentraland, there is no single definition of what a corporate metaverse could look like.
Owl Labs defined the metaverse as “highly immersive virtual experiences that recreate ‘real-life’ opportunities for work, socialising, entertainment, and education — in the workplace”.
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Frank Weishaupt, chief executive, said: “I believe employees are thinking that this metaverse sounds like an opportunity for me to feel like I am there [in the office] without being there.
“It is that ability to physically connect with others while sharing the same experience or environment. That is why we are seeing so many people have a level of interest in [the metaverse] even before they know what it is.”
In August, Meta launched a trial version of its Horizon Workrooms virtual reality software as a free download for owners of its Oculus Quest 2 headsets.
It said the software was “designed to improve your team’s ability to collaborate, communicate, and connect remotely, through the power of VR — whether that’s getting together to brainstorm or whiteboard an idea, work on a document, hear updates from your team, hang out and socialise, or simply have better conversations that flow more naturally”.
Microsoft announced last month that its own virtual collaboration software, called Mesh, would be integrated into its Teams software, which is used by 250 million people.
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Weishaupt said progress still needed to be made connecting existing meeting rooms for hybrid working — he estimated that less than 10 per cent had been wired for video globally.
“We are not going to go from where we are today to this friction-free, all-hands meeting where we all believe we are sitting at Wembley Stadium. That is not going to happen this Thursday,” he said. “But there are going to be steps along the way where technology is going to play a big role.”
Owl’s product is a 360-degree, centre-of-the-table camera, speaker and microphone device that captures content that could enable remote workers to have a more immersive experience of connecting with the office.
Weishaupt said: “For instance, I’d like the opportunity to plug into the office to take a look around to see if it’s busy, buzzy, who is in and who is not. The panoramic view means you know what is going on in the room. There is an opportunity for us to plug content in so that the remote person can look around.
“We are not there yet and not everyone has an Oculus headset,” he added. “But if you did have one, we could provide the content so that you had a full perspective of what is going on in the room.
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“There are lots of times where there will be physical collaboration, on a white board for example or if I am showing samples to people in the room. If you don’t have that full view you are not going to participate at the same level.”
