It seems that only now has the term "Metaverse" and its implications come to light in the business world. Those who follow the rapid changes in the business world have the impression that the metaverse has just been created and that the race to conquer a pioneering role in virtual worlds is becoming increasingly fierce. Suddenly we need to be present with our companies, businesses and products available so that the first adventurers of this reality have the best experience possible. The truth is that, despite the current frenzy around the conquest of a new virtual world, the concept of the metaverse did not have its original beginnings in this millennium.
The term was first used in the Neil Stevenson's 1982 novel Snow Crash. Stevenson's metaverse was a virtual place where characters could escape a grim totalitarian reality. Of course this also reminds us of a 1999 movie you may have seen, called "The Matrix". In the film directed by the Wachowskis sisters, the real physical world is a scenario of war between machines and humans, while in parallel, there is the world of the Matrix, where people's minds live imprisoned in an alienated reality without any knowledge of what really happens in the real world. You see, the construction of the metaverse as we are witnessing today is not that different from Stevenson's movie and book, except for this: we are not looking for an anesthesia or escape from our reality, we are looking for the best we can be as human beings: we want to explore, create and experience it all in a virtual way together with the physical world.
This is where my point begins to unravel.
We're way past the part of accepting that technology converges with us in the way we live and work, right? As I mentioned earlier, our focus turned to the race to get there first. Market giants are currently investing billions of dollars in the metaverse (Meta, Microsoft, Nike, etc.), with a fixed view that it is in the metaverse that relationships between companies and customers will take place (take a look at the NFTs ). If we stop to think about it, in this whole process, human interaction will always be the beginning, middle and end of everything. You do not need to go that far to come to the conclusion that, with corporations, new job opportunities will arise in the the metaverse. And believe me, everyone will want to get there first.
With the development of Web 3.0, technical skills have been a top investment priority when thinking about training and recruiting. In other words, we are able to see an ocean filled with perfect candidates with all the necessary delivery skills. But, how to filter? That's where soft skills come in, the differentiating factor that will define who stays and who leaves in the job market. At the same time, these emotional skills still do not have a correct formula for measurement because they are intangible, and their development ends up suffering hard drops due to the lack of investments and necessary tools; hence its advance is constantly interrupted.
The metaverse is the big game changer of all this and I'll explain how:
Just as the term "metaverse" does not exist from today, the possible applicability of soft skills in a virtual world has also been studied for some time. The study " Understanding The Effectiveness of Soft Skills Training in The Enterprise” published by PwC in 2020, showed that virtual reality is a perfect tool for soft skills training, proving to be even more effective than online learning methods as we know it. Data provided from a survey that questioned leading professionals from 12 US locations revealed advantages in the following segments:
CONFIDENCE: V-learners (as VR absorbing knowledge are called) were 275% more confident to act on what they learned after training — a 40% improvement % in relation to the classroom and 35% in relation to e-learning.
FOCUS: V-learners were up to four times more focused than e-learners (those adept at Web 2.0 online learning). They completed training on average four times faster than classroom training and 1.5 times faster than e-learning. V-grads were 3.75 times more emotionally connected
LOW COST AND EFFECTIVENESS: V-learning is likely to be an accelerator that will help usher in a new era of business education and training by offering a cost-effective, immersive and efficient experience to train employees in soft skills .
ENGAGEMENT: V-learners were 2.3 times more connected to content than e-learners in the classroom. In addition to these benefits, v-learn is estimated to be more cost-effective than classroom or e-learning modalities when delivered at scale.
Image Source: PwC Study “The Effectiveness of Soft Skills Training in Virtual Reality for Companies”
In other words, as the tools needed to enter the metaverse become more accessible globally, more leaders will be able to apply immersive development inside their companies, leaving aside traditional methods of teaching interpersonal skills to employees - such as watching lectures, review cases or apply tiresome tests with no proven effectiveness.
Imagine a world where employees will be able to engage in real-life risk situations such as a difficult meeting, for example, practice empathy or train reactions in crisis management, - all without the risk or fear of being disconnected from the company? This world is real and it's already here.
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