How Metaverse Will Affect Human Resources

From employee performance tracking to identifying security threats, metaverse will change everything

Metaverse and Web3 technology has exploded into consumer consciousness in the last two years with no signs of stopping. According to a report from Grayscale, we saw the all-time value spent on metaverse items like virtual land, goods, and services skyrocket from $50 million in December 2020 to over $207 million less than a year later. This massive investment in virtual environments will have a significant impact on the business community, particularly in human resources. 

The key issue surrounding this melding of technology and industry is privacy. With every employee action being tracked and recorded as businesses move into the metaverse, we will see the average privacy concerns regarding workplace data magnify exponentially. This data could be used to assess employee performance and identify potential safety and security issues. 

 

1. Assessing Employee Performance

As businesses are given more access to data on their employees, evaluations could change dramatically. Where once your output, attitude, and results were the determining factors for how well an employee performed their job, the emergence of data tracking may result in things like how well you did or how attentive you were with a customer in a virtual space. 

That said, there are certainly positives. For instance, the metaverse may allow employers to identify workers’ strengths more easily, as well as their weaknesses. 

2. Identifying Potential Safety Issues

While people will mostly be using avatars in the metaverse, many companies are turning to eXtended Reality, or XR, in response. This combination of virtual, augmented and mixed realities allows for a more organic approach to the metaverse workplace, by allowing a real person to interact in a virtual environment, rather than using traditional blocky/cartoon avatars. 

Regardless of how the employee’s presence is projected, they will be interacting in what will still constitute a work setting. Companies must remain serious about how exactly to oversee this virtual space to avoid problematic behavior, such as harassment, abuse, or bullying. 

A good guide would be to determine what constitutes such behavior in the virtual world, integrate the definitions into your workplace policies and educate employees on inappropriate behavior in the metaverse. As interactions are codified in the data, spotting harassment and workplace turmoil will lead to swifter action ensuring all employees enjoy a safe workplace. 

3. Identifying Potential Security Issues

As employees will likely be connecting remotely to start, ensuring that non-employees do not gain access to the workplace metaverse will be paramount. Companies will need to safeguard the connection process to ensure that each login only allows approved users. 

The safest bet here is the tried-and-true 2FA authentication process with a real authenticator, not SMS 2FA which has lately been compromised with SIM cloning. With increased digital security measures, companies will be able to better protect their employees and the company’s confidential information.  

In the metaverse, privacy concerns will be magnified as every action is tracked and recorded. As a result, HR departments will need to develop new policies and procedures to protect employees' privacy and ensure that their actions are not being unduly monitored. 

Technology will also have to catch up in order to process this level of data capture. 

Eaven Portillo is Co-Founder and COO of Sortium. Connect Eaven Portillo