We are in the early stages of implementing the metaverse right now, so we can learn from our mistakes in real work and build a better kind of “metawork”. This will be a collaborative process that requires courageous leadership and grassroots participation. But with awareness and intention, we can build an inspiring and equitable professional frontier for women and minorities.

The Metaverse — a 4D hyper-immersive online world is just beginning. It is up to us to try to build it without the glass ceiling that exists in the real world. In fact, the primary users of the Metaverse are women. But when it comes to power dynamics, the ratio is reversed. At the moment, there is a gender divide in the Metaverse, and despite our dreams of building a virtual world that is fairer than most places on Earth, that divide is rife with today’s brick-and-mortar technology. It’s disturbingly similar to the world.

So where do we start?

The CEO and entrepreneur roles remain disproportionately male, a phenomenon that is also reflected in venture capital, where only 17% of funding goes to female-led companies. It also mimics Fortune 500 numbers, with less than 10% of her corner office occupants being women.

But while the technology is in its infancy, there is still time to turn things around. The Metaverse Workplace (called “Metawork” or “MetaOffice”) is a great place to start.

“41% of women have used a major metaverse platform or participated in the digital world,” compared to only 34% of men. This vulnerable majority presents an unprecedented opportunity to build a brave new world whose representatives are taken seriously. If you put a woman on the first floor, the glass ceiling will be broken.

Today, HR teams have long been familiar with the details of recruitment and hiring regardless of gender.

— Relying on the metaverse can improve gender-blind interviews and promotions for companies. It’s one of the powerful tools I’ve had to use to ensure fairness over the years.

As companies build spaces in this new virtual world, another key factor is design justice. It uses design principles to embrace marginalized perspectives and create inclusive spaces from all angles. The community affected by a design is considered before the design itself is created, so keeping women workers’ needs in mind and allowing women designers to sit at the table is also important in the new metaverse. is.

Moreover, hybrid working will become a permanent fixture, and the Metaverse provides the ideal platform to extend and improve this new reality as companies such as Google are already pioneering collaborative equity.

Women, who multiple studies have shown to prefer remote work, have an advantage in the virtual world. HR teams can encourage and support female employees by directing resources into the Metaverse work environment. In a hybrid workplace, this allows employees who choose to log in from home to pioneer and help shape the design, format, and shape of her space in the company’s budding metaverse. culture. As colleagues from all over the world congregate in shared virtual workspaces, the days of being the only woman in the room can be set back. What would happy hour look like when all of her members of the team she usually hangs out with are allowed to join the party from school?

Digital transformation was originally led by male-dominated IT teams, but HR professionals, who are overwhelmingly female, must play a key role in creating a better virtual work environment. According to a McKinsey report, “Men hold 90% of leadership roles in organizations that develop metaverse standards.” In the real world, when standards are predominantly determined by men, women’s concerns are They are often ignored or misunderstood. Women leaders should be actively recruited at this early stage to help set standards.

Metawork is already happening and many innovations are underway. All current use cases are about immersive onboarding and training. Accenture, for example, built his entire Nth floor for a consultant. The company also set up an entire AT consulting team to empower other companies to succeed in the Metaverse. Microsoft Mesh for teams, meanwhile, sets up an employee transitioning from Zoom to his Web3 by seamlessly swapping video chats with avatars. Bring 3D space into your current chat room.

Over 500 companies are already building on the Metaverse, and more are joining every day. And as companies struggle to either return to in-person work or balance remote workers and hybrid workweeks, HR teams have jumped at the opportunity to grow and adapt their corporate culture using the metaverse. increase.

As such, HR teams and managers pair and train technology-focused employees with those from other departments to apply the metaverse to improve cross-company and/or customer or product interactions. You need to set up a cross-business team to collaborate on how.

See how Zoom enabled a hybrid workforce in the lightning bolt of the pandemic. The metaverse is now poised to go further, but the pace of change is slow and the path is less clear. There are exciting early use cases in training, learning, and development, and more innovations to come.

The next generation internet provides us with a near blank slate to build a better and fairer digital universe for learning, working and playing. world. We carry all our luggage with us. The same applies to the metaverse. Inclusiveness has potential, but just like in the real world, we need to work on it.