Virbela, a platform that creates virtual worlds for remote work, learning, and events, has released its 2023 enterprise metaverse trends and predictions.
The company broke down the trends into three categories: innovation and investment, employee experience and management, and security in the metaverse.
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Innovation and Investment
Virbela predicts that next year, metaverse products will launch in an attempt to make imagined use cases real. The company says it’s beginning to see “metaverse budgets”, and internal “metaverse teams” as companies begin to take a further step, creating actual plans for the technology.
Virbela also predicts that while companies in 2022 struggled with the adjustment to hybrid work, this coming year, they will respond better and look to virtual worlds and the metaverse for solutions.
Companies are likely to start with lower-risk metaverse programs to build value across teams, and as the metaverse becomes second nature, we’ll see them add complexity, Virbela suggests.
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Employee Experience, Management & DEI in the metaverse
When it comes to employee experience, Virbela reports that metaverse spaces will help give a larger voice to workers who may feel reluctant to speak up in the physical world, leading to more diversity in ideas.
“Being spatially present and ‘seen’ with colleagues again, but without the constraints of physical location, will lead to a better work-life balance, employee health and happiness both in and out of work.”
In 2023, we’ll see individual contributor, management, and executive roles change. Some may disappear as global teams become more efficient. Meanwhile, others will create roles to manage remote work, create communication channels, set new productivity benchmarks, and define culture. Accessibility to the metaverse will take priority for companies over fancy hardware like headsets.
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Regulation and Security in the metaverse
Governments will have multifaceted relationships with the metaverse. The company added that due to a “lax central regulatory environment for Web2,” social media has begun to exploit user data and become a channel for manipulating human behaviour.
2023 will be a year where industry leaders and government authorities will need to focus on working together on regulations and privacy controls, and be more thoughtful about the value proposition that communities and individuals hold in the metaverse.
Virbela suggests that immersive collaboration within the metaverse will help make companies more transparent, eliminating the need for remote employee tracking tools.
“The metaverse is the next iteration of the internet, but with security,” Virbela notes. “While we will keep talking about “openness” and decentralization for the masses – in the B2B world, it will prioritize privacy and security. Our customers are actually asking for higher walled gardens as they battle with GDPR and other enterprise compliance issues.”