How Team Building in the Metaverse meets the challenges of hybrid work?

75% of employees in North American, Europe and Australia will prefer hybrid work in the future according to McKinsey. However, nowadays, hybrid work is facing complex issues in terms of how organizations can pursue bringing a positive and shared work experience to their employees. This is why reshaping team building and how to develop and strengthen team spirit appears critical. The Team Building in the Metaverse is one way to achieve this goal.

Combining Hybrid Work, Team Building and Metaverse: 4 reasons to take action today

On one hand, employees acclaim hybrid work. On the other, organizations have 4 elements to take into account while pursuing building and developing team spirit. All highlight a need for more interaction via innovative platform like the Metaverse.

1 – the deterioration of employee mental health

2- the imperfect communication of hybrid teams

3- the need to maintain or regain teams’ creativity

4- the employees’ expectations

1/ Hybrid work: Employees’ expectations

The employees expect more Team Building. They already did prior to the pandemic. For instance, in France in 2019, 71% executives said their manager didn’t organize enough Team Building activities. Now, that work has become hybrid, this type of expectations is more present. As we explained in a previous article, Team Building is not only an employee expectation, it’s also a key success factor for organization for 9 different reasons.

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2/  The need to maintain or regain team creativity

The impact of remote work on team creativity has been largely discussed during the pandemic. With hybrid work, the problem remains if no virtual or real team gathering moments are planned. Employees no longer bump into each other as often as they used to and breaking the distance between them is critical to create spontaneity and beyond collective intelligence.

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3/  The imperfect communication of hybrid teams

The studies of psychologist and professor Albert Mehrabien on interpersonal communication highlighted what is call the 3V rule. In short,

• Only 7% of communication is verbal namely based on the meaning of words
• 38% of communication is vocal namely based on the tone and sound of voice
• the rest of it, i.e. 55% corresponds to visual communication including facial expression and body language

With hybrid work, the messages between on-site and at-home employees are harder and slower to get through if the Internet/audio connection is not good enough or if cameras are turned off, which is more and more frequent. Correlatively, the likelihood of misunderstandings, the feelings of isolation and the need for activities which encourage dialogue and cohesion multiply.

The need for more Team Building activities exists for all hybrid team. This is especially true for teams including introverts and multicultural teams. Getting heard or getting a full sense of what is emphasized with understatements is more complex with a group interacting in both visio and in-person.

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4/ The deterioration of employees’ mental health

Employees’ mental health has deteriorated. Yet, the periods of psychological weakness are often moments of social withdrawal. This is why organizations cannot count currently on a spontaneous building of team spirit among employees. This is why, currently, organizations cannot count on a “spontaneous building” of a team spirit amid their teams. More than ever, they need to insufflate this kind of spirit. It’s critical to develop a feeling of belonging and cohesion among employees.

For 9 employers out of 10, the pandemic had a negative impact on the behavioral health of employees. Since then, the level of stress of the employees working hybrid remains high. Besides, all external factors, the balance between personal life and professional life is harder to find. In parallel, this work mode goes with a Zoom fatigue on employees’ side and it’s on the rise.

Sources: OMS, We Work Remotely, FE News, HR Reporter

In a context like this, experts insist on the need to arrange for moments during which teams can meet, relax and relieve stress. In this respect, the Metaverse is an environment conducive to develop recreational and collective activities through multiplayer games, and subsequently Team Building. As such, it’s an extremely powerful tool to unite employees. 

The key features of Team Building in the Metaverse

Team Building includes a large array of activities for employees. According to Science for Work, they have in common

1 – a goal: optimizing how the team works

2 – a method: doing instead of watching or listening

3 – a perception: a fun or extraordinary dimension

Metaverse can mix these 3 ingredients. The fact its future in organizations is largely associated with gamification reinforces its potential.

The Metaverse: avatars boosting interpersonal communication

With the Metaverse participants are virtually in the presence of each other through avatars. Simultaneously, Metaverse offers them a wider and more flexible digital identity compared to other digital tools. Actually, avatars provide participants with

• a pictorial but personalized identity – employees can customize their avatars and present (themselves) to others, see them, and connect with them without suffering the fatigue from being on camera like for the rest of their other meetings
• a behavioral identity because avatars can reproduce gestures, grab objects, move and adopt a discussion posture, face to face or side by side, and more generally accomplish all the actions the participants would have done in real life

In other words, in addition to verbal, written, audio and video communication, gesture is included in the interactions involved in a Team Building in the Metaverse. Actually, to insufflate team spirit, relying on non-verbal communication is important.

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So, the Metaverse is an excellent way to smooth and humanize communication as much as possible.  It’s also an excellent way to create a chill and trusting environment for employees. Indeed, that appears essential to build stronger interpersonal relationships, clarify certain roles or solving existing issues.

These specificities explain the power of Metaverse for Team-Building and various corporate activities regularly planned by organizations. For instance, seminars in the Metaverse also have a great value added in terms of impact and differentiation.

The metaverse: a fun and engaging virtual world

The history of Metaverse is linked to video games and its features (avatars, virtual universe, multiplayer mode …) make it an excellent playground to organize Team Building activities through engaging games for employees.

Employees strongly expect digital gamification. Clearly, this is an element to take into account regarding the hybrid work’s boom, the big resignation and the talent war. Engaging and committing teams through virtual Team Building activities appears critical. The Metaverse makes it possible.

Already in 2021, the international study conducted for Emeraude Escape had revealed employees expect more virtual cohesion. The employees conveyed they expect more interesting and more regular team cohesion solutions. In particular

• 54% said they had a virtual drink – a “Zoom apero” – to reinforce team spirit. However, only 25% felt like doing it again.
• 70% said they’d be thrilled to play competitive games like virtual escape rooms with their colleagues.

All the result of the study: How to keep your employees happy, productive, and loyal. 

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact our Game Designers to discover how to leverage the Metaverse’s features for your next Team Building activity.

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Team building in the Metaverse: inclusive and memorable activities

 

Inclusive activities

The Metaverse is a recent progress and at the same time a virtual and immersive universe. Actually, in this new digital world, participants can interact with the world around them. Consequently, it’s a fantastic space where immersing all employees – on-site and remote – in a shared dynamic of action and exploration.

What’s better than a virtual universe to bring unity to hybrid teams? Indeed, it helps gathering far more employees than an in-presence Team Building activity and it’s easy to use several languages. Discover for instance, the digital game, we have designed for Wavestone recently. It facilitated onboarding and team-building for 300 new employees worldwide. More generally, at Emeraude Escape, up to 200,000 players can play simultaneously at our games in the Metaverse.

Memorable activities

Besides, with a Team Building in the Metaverse, an organization can take its employees to places totally inaccessible in the real world (too far, too expensive, too dangerous, too imaginary, etc.), and offer them a shared experience. In parallel, this virtual world can reflect the company’s culture. At Emeraude Escape, all our games are tailor-made and customized. They are designed and developed in line with the identity of our clients and their objectives.

Likewise, work has become hybrid, tailor-made games for hybrid organizations are possible. In other words, games which associate a real and virtual format. This is for instance, the game format we used for Microsoft to support the return to office of their team based on the campus of Issy-les-Moulineaux.

 

 

Team Building in the Metaverse: activities fostering unity and relaxation

 

Activities fostering unity

The Metaverse is a playground that particularly suits a Team Building game involving healthy competition among the employees. The explanation can be found in its immersive dimension, its avatars, its multiplayer/user mode and its origins linked to the world of video games.

At Emeraude Escape, we design and develop tailor-made games to develop and strengthen corporate team spirit. We typically create games specifically fit Team Building in the Metaverse. Our Game Designers imagine Escape Games in the Metaverse, Treasure Hunt, and Investigations and a wide range of other premium and tailor-made games for our clients and their employees. This kind of customized activities are pretty effective to strengthen the links between team-members.

In the Metaverse, such activities immerse employees into a virtual world which offers all a change of scenery. They also bring them together thanks to unique scenarios and game progress involving shares and interactions. Our clients benefit from the games we have developed in the Metaverse for them in two ways. First, quantitatively, they register very high rates of participation and engagement. Secondly, qualitatively, they receive very positive feedbacks from the team-members who actually participated to the Team Building activity they have organized.

Activities fostering relaxation

Offering a gamified Team Building in the Metaverse may be good for employees, and by extension for organizations caring for both employees’ well-being, mental health, need for cohesion, and its productivity.

In this respect, the Entertainment Software Association has recently issued a report evoking video games’ habits and benefits. Among the Americans who regularly play to video games:

• 89% say video games relieve their stress
• 91% say video games stimulate them mentally
• 93% say video games bring them joy

These feelings are totally aligned with the important study conducted by Sakskatchewan University (Canada) and the professor Regan Mandryk (Read her interview). In 2020, this study established that video games can contribute to reduce stress, to foster sociabilization and improve mental health.

 

 

In conclusion, in an hybrid work context, organizing a Team Building in the Metaverse is an efficient response to the expectations and needs of both employees and organizations. You have more questions? Please feel free to contact our Game Designers to discuss about your Team Building objectives over a personalized demo.