The world today looks nothing like what it was 100 years ago. The internet disrupted the entire economy, and the Metaverse aims to do the same once again. The Metaverse will reshape the field of corporate training with the help of AI assistants and digital spaces to replace the traditional workplace model.
It brings new levels of social interaction, collaboration, and training protocols to businesses. This article looks at how the future of employee training lies with the Metaverse and its capacity for training simulations.
What is the Metaverse?
The Metaverse is a massive digital space hosted on the internet that is home to smaller digital worlds ruled by their own authorities. It is virtual and augmented reality merged with the spheres of finance, business, and medical science.
Gartner named the Metaverse as one of the most promising technologies of 2022. The Metaverse is so successful that projections estimate that spending on virtual reality and augmented reality software will explode from US$12 billion to US$72 billion in 2024.
This is a massive shift.
The Metaverse is a replacement for the current office culture of today. In the Metaverse, you no longer have to settle for corporate office space and be devoid of personality. You can design your virtual office to be whatever you like.
You can create authentic experiences in the virtual world powered by virtual sights, sounds, smells, and touch, powered by haptic technology to let you make the virtual world around you a reality.
The digital space of tomorrow
With the world shifting to remote working, people are wondering what the future will look like. Will businesses bother to rent office space anymore? That may be a thing of the past since the Metaverse aims to normalise remote working while bringing people together at the same time in the virtual world.
At this very moment, Stanford University is hosting virtual reality-based courses to bring distant classmates together into the virtual world, where students can learn with cutting-edge technology. Other universities, such as Deloitte University, have completely digitised themselves and aren’t looking back.
They created virtual classrooms for students during the pandemic and saw such dramatic improvements that they aim to keep the change permanent. The virtual world serves as a much better environment for students and aids in developing skills and practical knowledge that is much better learned and remembered, all thanks to the nature of the Metaverse.
This technology is revolutionising and disrupting the e-learning sector in such a profound way that businesses are looking to incorporate virtual learning to improve their bottom lines.
Your Metaverse digital assistant
The first thing you’ll notice about your new digital Metaverse space is your new digital AI assistant. This is a tool for every user that can act as your personal assistant. They have highly realistic human-like behaviours and can do everything that a regular secretary or personal assistant can do.
They can do basic calculations, remind you about appointments, and do anything repetitive and tedious to make sure that you spend your time on more profit-generating activities.
They can converse with you in your language and understand your voice commands with ease, thanks to the leaps and bounds made by AI technology in the past 10 years.
Your AI assistants aren’t just for busy work. They can act as your digital shopping assistant, your personal concierge, and even your personal wealth advisor. They can even give you personalised wealth management advice on what you should do with your money.
AI assistants don’t take coffee breaks. They don’t get tired. They work while you sleep. They can be in multiple locations of the Metaverse at once. You can personally choose their design and make their digital appearance suited to your needs.
The future of corporate training
No matter how far your office and home might be, it’s a cinch to log into the Metaverse. You no longer need to go to the office. You can bring the office to you. Whether your business has gone fully remote or chooses to go hybrid instead, the Metaverse can fulfill your needs.
You can visit the Metaverse and its digital spaces and meet up with all of your colleagues. Your colleagues can communicate with you with the help of real-time gestures and personalised avatars that never make you feel like you’re away from the office.
You can have group discussions, give presentations, and even engage in other social activities. The Metaverse allows you to be constructive and productive even if you’re thousands of miles away from your workplace.
All of the resources you need to conduct employee training are available for free on the Metaverse. In addition, you can generate whatever training materials you need at the snap of a finger. This allows you to save substantial costs on purchasing training materials in the real world.
And because the Metaverse is powered by haptic technology, your employees can actually learn by doing activities and observing their co-workers around them. Your employees are no longer forced to pour over books to improve their skills. They can get their hands dirty with the aid of simulation tools.
The simulation capabilities of the Metaverse are its strongest utility. Everyone learns in different ways, after all. Limiting your employees to learning by text hampers the learning process. With the Metaverse, you can conduct corporate training and engage your employee’s sense of sight, hearing, and touch to create a fully-realised world that could appeal to the specific learning style of your employee.
Real-world applications of the Metaverse
Businesses have been using simulations to train different professionals for decades now. All of that has reached the next level with the help of 3D virtual reality and augmented reality software.
Pilots use simulations to train in a safe environment where they won’t damage an actual plane filled with passengers. Surgeons use simulations to practice their surgical skills on a virtual test subject without needing to cut open a real human being. Even the US military has been known to use simulations to train its personnel for running specific engagement exercises where recruits can be trained without risk of bodily harm.
Many different professions make use of simulations, and the Metaverse is the perfect next step in evolution.
In practice, we can see the medical company, Medivis making use of Microsoft’s HoloLens to train their medical staff with 3D anatomically correct models. Embodied Labs uses 360-degree videos to train medical workers to recognise the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Bosch and Ford Motor use internal virtual reality training tools to make their technicians and engineers familiar with different kinds of automobiles for vehicle maintenance. Nurses use 3D animations and augmented reality training models to train for different scenarios to reinforce best practices in the field of nursing care.
The potential for employee training is endless with the Metaverse. Police, firefighters, and other professionals who run into dangerous situations can use simulations to create safe digital spaces where employees can be trained in specific situations without risking their lives.
Imagine police personnel training for aggressive situations, dealing with problem individuals, and other highly specific training scenarios to improve their confidence and success rates for improving key performance metrics in their jobs.
Conclusion
The Metaverse has tremendous potential for employee training in the future when remote working seizes hold of the world. It’s a productive way to bring employees face-to-face again while helping them improve their skills to better their job performance.
Used correctly, this is a powerful tool to disrupt the world of corporate training with the help of augmented reality and virtual reality to accelerate the learning process.
The Metaverse already has several applications in the field of medical science, aviation, and law enforcement. It comes with powerful digital assistants to make employees their own bosses and empower them to improve your bottom line.
