Back in the day we would use 'who installed a browser' that wasn't the default as an 'indirect signal' that denoted a level of individual interest in improving their digital productivity or experience. Nowadays we are swimming in indirect signals - from who organizes the most meetings (named if you use Audit log etc) to dynamics around networking (Viva Insights) to who uses Teams Apps (another great indirect signal of expanding productivity/investing in digital experiences). What still works best though is direct signals like comments, nominations, champion programs (yearly and NON MANAGER & NON IT focused) and more that help identify people and map them/amplify their visibility as potential super collaborators, those with high amounts of digital debt and those who would better benefit from greater digital fitness or digital experience investments.

1. Metaverse & The
Employee Experience
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
What You Need To Know
#MetaverseOne
Wed., Sep. 20, 2023 7:00 AM (EST)

2. My Twitter is @RHarbridge, I’m super friendly & proud to work at @2toLead.
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief
Technology Officer &
Microsoft MVP
Speaker & Author
Super Friendly

3. Navigating this major change
Metaverse & Employee Experience #MetaverseOne

4. We are at a Metaverse conference right now, but is it the most important EX change happening?
Metaverse vs Artificial Intelligence
Cryptocurrency
Artificial Intelligence
Metaverse
With only 2 to 3 years of notable research investment, it’s EARLY.

5. It is imperative that AI be led and owned by the business. It is too important to be left in
the hands of technologists alone. This is not a linear technology.
The Executive Discussion
Metaverse feels like more of a linear change
in its current state today but that can change.

6. AI Is A Major Transformative Technology For Employee Experience
AI change will be measured in years, not decades or generations. It’s a bigger change and faster.
This Led To:
The Spread Of
Societal Literacy
This Led To:
The Spread Of
Systematic
Management
This Led To:
The Spread Of
Information
Management
This Led To:
The Removal Of
Communication
Barriers
This Led To:
The Removal Of Skill
Barriers & Spread
Of Hyper-
Personalization?
New Work:
Printing
New Work:
Standard Docs
New Work:
eDocs
New Work:
Websites
New Work:
Perspective?
New Work:
Apps
This Led To:
The Removal Of
Presence & Access
Barriers

7. In essence the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. This is because other people’s capabilities
amplify our own and together, we deliver higher quality and better results when we collaborate.
Before Collaboration Might Have Been 1 + 1 = 3

8. The way AI works is it gives each person their own contextualized and personalized collaborator,
one that has access to an incredible number of skills, information, and processing capability.
Now Collaboration Is 1xAI + 1xAI = Exponential Value

9. More importantly this shifts collaboration and meetings to higher value as the low value ones are
often offset by using AI itself. Many meetings are only people transacting skills – those low value
meetings are displaced over time and replaced by collaboration with AI.
Collaboration & Meetings Shift (Less Low Value & More High Value)
Most people say it’s difficult to
brainstorm in a virtual meeting (58%)
And since February 2020, people are in 3x more
Teams meetings and calls per week (192%).
Today, only 1 in 3 people (35%) think they would be
missed in the majority of their meetings.

10. The Metaverse is still new to Employee
Experience, but as organizations,
industries and society transforms with AI
greater emphasis on high value
meetings will be a result and this is
where the Metaverse is already having
real impact.

11. Exploring the Enterprise Metaverse
Metaverse & Employee Experience #MetaverseOne

12. The Paths To Value For The Metaverse & Business
There are two categories for the business metaverse: the industrial metaverse and the metaverse
workplace. What’s changing is that VR & AR may become core tools in our employee experience.
Consumer
Metaverse
Industrial
Metaverse
Enterprise
Metaverse

13. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
Jacob Morgan in “The Employee Experience Advantage” suggests three environments that support and reinforce each other.
With the shift driven by Hybrid Work, it has pushed greater weight on cultural and technological environments.
The Employee Experience Environments
The feeling employees
get working for your
organization
The actual spaces in
which employees
work
The tools
employees use to
get their jobs done

14. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on culture. But it’s not clear yet what that
will be. At this stage while we can work to understand and align, the impact is still limited.
The Employee Experience Environments: Culture
• Provide a feeling of togetherness when working alone.
• Having “presence” has not always been equitable.
• Not all of us can afford clothing, good lighting or camera systems.
• No legs may be more inclusive (example: wheelchair user).
• Figure or ‘body size’ in VR.
• Immersive technology can be costly (flat screen experience matters).
• Audio cues and avatar hand movements to start, but mimicking
facial movements and more matters long term.

15. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on culture. But it’s not clear yet what that
will be. At this stage while we can work to understand and align, the impact is still limited.
The Employee Experience Environments: Culture
Do we control backgrounds in Teams video?
What is our stance on green screens and filters?
What is our stance on Avatars?
What is our stance on VR at work…

16. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on how we meet. Not only with improved
Metaverse experiences but also innovations stemming from that that improve ALL meetings as well.
The Employee Experience Environments: Technology
Increase inclusion and participation with AI Avatars
Leverage Spatial Audio to improve listening
Engage in more ways with immersive spaces
Share experiences with Mesh and the Metaverse

17. We are experiencing greater volume, velocity, and variety of communication and collaboration. This
requires us to collaborate, communicate and manage employees in better ways than we have before.
We Want Better Employee Experiences

18. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on how we meet. Not only with improved
Metaverse experiences but also innovations stemming from that that improve ALL meetings as well.
The Employee Experience Environments: Technology
Increase inclusion and participation with AI Avatars
Leverage Spatial Audio to improve listening
Engage in more ways with immersive spaces
Share experiences with Mesh and the Metaverse

19. We are experiencing greater volume, velocity, and variety of communication and collaboration. This
requires us to collaborate, communicate and manage employees in better ways than we have before.
We Want Better Employee Experiences

20. The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on how we meet. Not only with improved
Metaverse experiences but also innovations stemming from that that improve ALL meetings as well.
The Employee Experience Environments: Technology
Increase inclusion and participation with AI Avatars
Leverage Spatial Audio to improve listening
Engage in more ways with immersive spaces
Share experiences with Mesh and the Metaverse

21. We are experiencing greater volume, velocity, and variety of communication and collaboration. This
requires us to collaborate, communicate and manage employees in better ways than we have before.
We Want Better Employee Experiences

22. The Metaverse can have a long term and lasting impact on how we meet. Not only with improved
Metaverse experiences but also innovations stemming from that that improve ALL meetings as well.
The Employee Experience Environments: Technology
Increase inclusion and participation with AI Avatars
Leverage Spatial Audio to improve listening
Engage in more ways with immersive spaces
Share experiences with Mesh and the Metaverse

23. Who To Focus On? The Few Over The Many?
The distribution of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided. In most cases, 20% to 35% of
value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees.

24. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The effect of VR and AR on experiences that compliment or historically have been in the physical
environment is still being determined. While it’s important to understand there isn’t enough here yet.
The Employee Experience Environments: Physical
VR Office Tours (Easier now to capture and render).
VR & AR Augmenting Physical Environment Experiences (Labs, Design, etc).
VR & AR Augmenting Vetting/Testing Simulation.
The trainee's view from the Strivr virtual-reality platform of watering and other tasks
on the 'wet wall,' the leafy vegetables section of a Walmart produce department.

25. Why Is The Microsoft Mesh Important?
Due to the Mesh rendering potential, we can visualize far more via the cloud than could be visualized
locally. This allows for a richer fidelity of experience than before. Enabling room scale explorations and more.

26. Skilled Worker Shortages Supported By AR & VR
Education and training with VR and AR is changing industries but it’s also helping many immerse and
understand them further. The future of every industry is deeper and more digital.
MicrosoftEducation_Immersive_Experiences_Education_2019.pdf (azureedge.net)

27. The way we see digital employee experience at 2toLead is based on 3 primary areas of investment.
Each of these are impacted by the Metaverse today.
The Employee Experience Environments: Technological

28. Avatars, Immersive Spaces and
Microsoft Mesh each help improve the
Employee Experience, but don’t
underestimate innovations like Spatial
Audio, or Apps (like Games For Work)
can change a meeting experience.

29. Looking to the future
Metaverse & Employee Experience #MetaverseOne

30. What are some of the key experiences that are still amazing in person and limited in our Metaverse
enabled employee experience?
Why Does In Person Matter Still?

31. We are experiencing greater volume, velocity, and variety of communication and collaboration. This
requires us to collaborate, communicate and manage employees in better ways than we have before.
We Want Better Employee Experiences

32. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The work in Avatars has accelerated due to innovations in AI. We can now create hyper realistic AI
based Avatars, that can lip sync multiple languages, and much more.
The Employee Experience Environments: Culture
By 2025, AI avatars leveraging text-to-video using generative AI technology will support 70% of digital and
marketing communications from less than 5% in 2022. - ChatGPT Urgency for Advancing Generative AI (gartner)

33. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The work in Avatars has accelerated due to innovations in AI. We can now create hyper realistic AI
based Avatars, that can lip sync multiple languages, and much more.
The Employee Experience Environments: Culture

34. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
The work in Avatars has accelerated due to innovations in AI. We can now create hyper realistic AI
based Avatars, that can lip sync multiple languages, and much more.
The Employee Experience Environments: Culture

35. It is important to understand how others feel, react and process as they listen or speak.
The Importance Of Body Language?
Please don’t sue me for using this image in a
presentation oh mighty Walt Disney Company.

36. While it may seem futuristic with Google’s Project Starline the reality is that AI innovations in
video processing and 3D generation have made a lot of this FAR more accessible/viable.
What If We Could Share More Of This With 3D Presence?

37. While it may seem futuristic with Google’s Project Starline the reality is that AI innovations in
video processing and 3D generation have made a lot of this FAR more accessible/viable.
What If We Could Share More Of This With 3D Presence?

38. A huge boost to the importance of Metaverse innovation in the employee experience will be
the dominance of AI superpowers brought to meetings that have a strong digital focus.
What About Interpreting Language Itself?

39. There is a lot of discussion during, before, after and around meetings that we can miss.
The Importance Of Conversation & Connection

40. Microsoft Mesh For HoloLens
Rich immersive experiences with others in Team spaces powered by the HoloLens are powerful. This AR
focused set of presence and shared experience enables spatial collaboration in new ways.

41. Microsoft Mesh For Microsoft Teams
Interacting together in a mesh AR, VR or flat space can enable some participants to use more capabilities that are
more natural. 3D Annotation is especially fluid and it helps us meet an increased collaboration complexity.
Drop in Spaces:
We have a focus on
transactional
interactions when
highly remote. This
can mean more
natural, spontaneous
interactions.
Don’t forget
about Viva
Engage and
Yammer
Communities!

42. It’s easier than ever to both discover, engage and share with AI assistive generated content
requiring less skill and enabling more people to communicate and have their intent understood.
Important Changes To Viva Engage & Digital Adoption

43. With built in tooling it’s also easier to express more of yourself with easy editing (soon to be AI
assisted) as you engage in “video conversation threads”.
Important Changes To Viva Engage & Digital Adoption

44. With built in tooling it’s also easier to express more of yourself with easy editing (soon to be AI
assisted) as you engage in “video conversation threads”.
Important Changes To Viva Engage & Digital Adoption

45. We are only at the start of AI editing; it will make video far more accessible to far more people. If
you can create near real time video responses think of how that changes digital social spaces.
AI Is Making Video Editing More Accessible & Faster

46. We are experiencing greater volume, velocity, and variety of communication and collaboration. This
requires us to collaborate, communicate and manage employees in better ways than we have before.
We Want Better Employee Experiences

47. We are only at the start of AI being used for more complex generation; there are already early examples of
it helping make the creation of Virtual spaces more accessible to more people.
Virtual World Building May Be More Accessible With AI

48. The Metaverse is improving Employee
Experience, but it’s just getting started.
AI will accelerate and enhance the
Metaverse so embracing AI sooner
helps both.

49. You will love the way we work. Together. ™
Download our free
80+ page whitepaper
Transform your Employee Experience
at every stage with Microsoft 365
and Microsoft Viva!
Download Today

50. Let’s connect and find ways to do more and work together.
Message me on LinkedIn or email Richard@2toLead.com
200+ Awesome Presentations at:
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
Super Friendly
Thank You
Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
800+ Pages of Whitepapers at: 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
Elsewhere…
M365Resources.com
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M365Metrics.com
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Feedback:
https://metaverse-one.rocks/feedback

51. Thank you!