How Will the Metaverse Transform the Workplace?

From insights to action, the path to extraordinary value starts here.
Metaverse,
meet workplace
How will Extended Reality
transform interaction?

The pace and scale of
technological change is
racing ahead at perhaps
the greatest speed seen
in human history, and
it’s transforming the way
we live and work.
Metaverse, meet workplace: How will Extended Reality transform interaction? Copyright © 2022 Accenture. All rights reserved. 2

For businesses, new tools and
technologies are creating a future
very different from the one they
were designed to operate in.
Case in point? The metaverse.
While the term has existed for some time,
the metaverse is now actionable and has
entered the enterprise space. Yet the rise
of extended reality (XR) technologies poses
some big questions. Not least, how will these
combine with increasingly cheap and powerful
semiconductors and ever-powerful graphic
design software to precipitate fundamental
change in the office of the future?

Out of office?
Despite the global proliferation of vaccines
against COVID-19, continued uncertainty
and constantly changing expectations have
meant there has not been the return en masse
to office that many initially predicted.
Certainly, the legacy office is no longer fit for purpose. One reason?
It lacks the creature comforts and amenities that continue to make
working from home such an attractive alternative. More important,
virtual-to-virtual collaboration, while less engaging than face-to-face,
is still much easier to coordinate — with parity of experience
guaranteed — than virtual-to-physical meetings.

Communication
breakdown
We’ve all experienced situations where we dial in
from a conference room to connect to colleagues
virtually. As well as struggling to make their voices
heard through lack of presence,it can be challenging
for them to follow the conversation.
Often this results from poor video and audio setups within the conference
room. Or the fact that many remote participants often only experience
a wide-angle view of the conference room without the ability to see
individual expressions. In workshop sessions, issues persist in keeping
track of what’s drawn and/or posted on whiteboards. Both are barriers
to seamless collaboration. These problems create unnecessary friction
and get in the way of true “hybrid working.”

Easing friction
These issues can, of course,be mitigated by technical enhancements like
multi-camera setups, enhanced microphones, and digital whiteboards.
But there is a level of inherent friction that will always remain.
Organizations should develop enhanced
collaboration spaces that reduce these kinds
of barriers to hybrid working. Why? Because
the future of work is all about optionality. People
want to be able to choose when, where and
how they work.
Yes, there will always be some employees who
prefer working in a physical office. Furthermore,
offices will continue to remain a powerful tool
in employing new talent, while keeping existing
employees. But hybrid working is here to stay.
And right now, much of the delay in its adoption
stems from the failure of existing collaboration
technologies to adequately support rich,
high-fidelity interactions. Usually, basic video
conferencing is still the only widely available option.

Present and
productive
Enter XR and the metaverse.

Together, these can solve two
key issues plaguing today’s hybrid
workplace: lack of presence and
the fact that existing productivity
tools and collaboration technologies
are geared toward a predominantly
“single-player” experience.

Neither of these have been problems before.
That’s because working side-by-side with
colleagues has always enabled ad-hoc,
serendipitous conversations to flow organically.
Sitting in a traditional office, you can see when
your colleagues are taking natural breaks in the
rhythm of work and engage them in friendly
conversation. This yields benefits like iterative
innovation and dissemination of information
organization-wide.
Contrast that with the rigid labels of instant
messaging systems. “Available,” “Away” and
“In a call” don’t offer anything like enough
richness to discern a colleague’s true presence.

Step into the
“meta-office”
That all changes, however, when you activate
an XR headset and enter the “meta-office.”
The meta-office is what Accenture and Microsoft have created with
our virtual campus (nicknamed the “Nth floor”).
Employees experience a much richer environment, one where they can
interact with the avatars of colleagues. This paves the way for a virtual
world of seamless collaboration. In this way, users can find colleagues
in real-time, talk to them, and then work together on purpose-built
collaboration tools that support a multiplayer experience.
Think about the implications at scale. With 250M Teams-enabled users
worldwide, Microsoft Mesh connects workers in different physical
locations and creates a shared digital and holographic experience.
This ability is nothing short of game-changing.

A whole new experience…
step by step
We see these innovations as the first steps toward creating
a genuinely new way of working.
Today, the meta-office is a simulacrum of the
physical office, complete with digitalrepresentations
of furniture, window blinds, a kitchenette, and
other design cues borrowed from the physical world.
Known as “skeuomorphic” design, this is a
transitional phase. It’s part of the process of
progressing from physical native to digital
analogue, before moving on to a truly digital
native version.
A classic example of this? Remember how
the original iPhone’s iBooks app featured
a wood paneling effect that mimicked a
wooden bookshelf? This approach preceded
the digital native version we have today that
doesn’t resemble a book or bookshelf at all.

Start familiar and
build from there
We’reseeing the start of this with meta-office.

It has taken a familiar form to
drive adoption and ease users
into the experience. But we don’t
see this as the final evolution of
the metaverse workspace.
Change is happening too rapidly for it to stop here.
Computer-generated graphics are improving in
fidelity all the time. It’s also getting significantly
cheaper to generate in real-time.
As it becomes possible for real-time human micro-
expressions to be mirrored on a user’s avatar —
enabled by rich spatial audio and sufficient controls
to emulate a lifelike experience — barriers to
seamless hybrid collaboration crumble and a
new way of working is ushered in.

Organizations across the health services landscape are now working
on a number of collaboration use-cases, including:
Use-cases across healthcare
round-the-clock interaction and support
with a remote collaborator. These devices
can also be brought into patients’ homes.
• Specialist consultation — consultants
wearing HoloLens 2 headsets using Remote
Assist can share their opinions with other
consultants, providing patients with highly
specialized, holistically-informed treatments.
Medical notes and X-rays can also be
placed alongside the call in the wearer’s
field of view to allow in-person and remote
consultants to triage collaboratively.
• Education and training — medical simulation
is an experiential form of education,
using a simulated healthcare environment
where “real life” skills and experiences can
be replicated.
• Ward rounds — using Remote Assist in
wards, clinicians wearing HoloLens 2 can
hold calls with colleagues and experts
anywhere in the world.
• Community care — HoloLens 2 devices
can be based at care homes, enabling

Greater choice,
more flexibility
Many of the practices developed through these use-cases can
be applied to scenarios beyond healthcare.
The heart of this impressive technology is about
connecting colleagues in an increasingly remote
and online world. And the meta-office will present
near limitless opportunities for future ways
of working.
Employees will be able to combine the best of
remote and office working. That means maintaining
seamless collaboration and understanding of
their colleagues’ presence while spending less
time commuting and more time with friends
and family. It’s a win/win. A better experience
for people at work and significant productivity
gains for the organizations that employ them.
What’s more, by enhancing the employee
experience through a near limitless choice of
where people can be located, organizations
will differentiate themselves. They will become
more desirable places of employment, helping
them to secure and retain talent.

The future’s coming.
Get ready.
Toprepare themselves for the hybrid future,
organizations should seek to be early adopters
of XR technology.

Transitioning to new cutting-edge
XR headsets will take time and
effort to fully embed into the
organizational culture.
Starting now is critical, the rate of technology
development is accelerating and the cumbersome
headsets of today will shortly be replaced with
lighter, more functional and more wearable devices.
Organizations should consider how the virtual-
physical meeting continuum can be expressed
through virtual reality (VR). What we have
discussed here is the fully virtualized metaverse.
Many more possibilities exist. For example,
VR streaming can enable remote colleagues to
visit a virtual replica of the office. In this replica,
they are able to look through a virtual display
screen to see a live conference being broadcast
to them, blurring the boundaries between
onsite and remote and reducing friction during
collaboration. The possibilities become endless.

So how to get started?
Pilot programs that
spearhead XR adoption
will be key to unlocking
the metaverse’s potential,
supporting dramatic
organizational change
and powering the growing
economic and societal
trends of decentralization
and distribution.

Michael Holzman
Global Lead, Digital Workplace,
Cloud First
Michael brings 20+ years of experience to
the design and implementation of workplace
technologies across almost every industry.
Harry Morphakis
Senior Manager
Harry is the UK and Europe lead for
Accenture’s Intelligent Workspace offering.
He is responsible for co-creating future
employee workplace experience across
multiple clients, developing thought
leadership and designing technology
that powers the workplaces of tomorrow.
About the authors

References
1 Meet me in the Metaverse. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/technology/technology-trends-2022
2 Going beyond with extended reality. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/going-beyond-extended-reality
3 Welcome to the Nth Floor – Accenture’s Virtual Office. https://youtu.be/lZttHYDgV64

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