Employee Experience empowered by metaverse

Victor Hugo at UXDX Community: Empowering the Teams and Product Impact. Video: https://youtu.be/X4QmxuR6oow

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

What weme is and why the metaverse

[00:00:00] Yeah, I'm very excited to be here, thank you. So at first I'd like to say that I'll talk about our experience at weme, just wondering about how could metaverse increase the employee experience, empower the employee experience in different types of organizations. So at weme we are a team of different specialized professionals connected to boost the power of innovation and entrepreneurship in organizations, using design for it. And we believe that work can be inspiring and gratifying and joyful, and this is a kind of non-declared employee value proposition, I believe that weme has for our wemers.

[00:00:52] And I'm here to tell you how a powerful journey can transform the way good things are built, especially in weme's case, and how might we get inspired by the metaverse to empower this journey of different employees, trying to deliver more value for our clients. And it's essentially about people, their interaction, what they manifest, how they communicate, how they learn in this immersive and virtual environment.

[00:01:27] And even though we still don't have a complete metaverse, as everybody talks about in different reports, we are already trying to learn how could employee experience be improved in this type of space and environment in the future.

Culture first: how the office used to work

[00:01:52] So let me share this experience. But at first I would like to say that we believe that a powerful journey starts inside of the company and not necessarily outside. So we start with our culture, and we believe that our employees reflect in our clients' experience.

[00:02:19] This is a type of thing that makes our daily effort, to make our employees think things like this. We would like to think that the detail matters and that we love when we listen to this kind of thing coming from our employees, the wemers. So they say things like: at weme I can be who I really am; it's a safe place to bring our opinions and thoughts; it's a design company for designers; and I see the impact that we provide for our clients. This is the kind of thing that when we listen to it, we have evidence that we are building a sense of belonging and the responsibility in our designers, as if they were the owners of the business.

[00:03:16] So at weme we used to have a physical space like this, where the clients could go and have joyful moments together while they were creating innovation projects for their companies. So we really represented a good moment in the routine of our clients. They usually love to come out of their offices and have a nice space where they can put their ideas, their crazy ideas, share it one to the other, and they could build really disruptive solutions for their usual problems.

[00:04:04] And then, this was our daily routine, doing projects, using Lego, using papers, post-its, and everybody meeting different clients, meeting spontaneously and sharing their ideas or their challenges, and sometimes creating projects together in a spontaneous way. And then after that, after all this, we used to do this, but then one thing changed the game for us. One thing made everything different, and then we needed to adapt ourselves.

Losing the coffee machine

[00:04:55] And then we started to do what everyone was doing. We started to use Zoom, Meet, started to use Discord, Miro. And all those tools were important and were good, were nice. But creating channels with the same names that we had in the rooms in our physical headquarters, or meeting just people we have scheduled to meet, was not enough for us.

[00:05:29] We used to have spontaneous meetings in our office, and our coffee machine was a very special place for the wemers, because in different projects different designers were meeting spontaneously at the coffee machine and they were sharing ideas, and sometimes they were creating incredible solutions with the insights they could have in these spontaneous moments.

[00:06:03] And we were losing all this, because we were just meeting ourselves when we had a scheduled meeting, or when we entered a channel at Discord and discussed some problem. Everything was very planned and we were losing our spontaneous moments that were so special for us.

What the metaverse promises, and what matters about it

[00:06:34] And then we heard about the metaverse and we thought, oh, it would be wonderful if we could interact in a place like the metaverse. But when you read about the metaverse, when you watch videos, when you read reports, when you try to understand the impact of the metaverse in the routine of people, you can find always the same: the metaverse will be a very big thing. So, one in four people will pass one hour a day in the metaverse from 2026.

[00:07:15] So this seems to be a lot of people using metaverse. Sometimes we can think that it depends on the concept of metaverse we are adopting, to believe that this kind of engagement will be possible. And I think that the most important thing in metaverse is not if we are using a 3D space or a 2D space, but it's about the inexorable dematerialization of physical space, distance and objects that the internet is delivering for each one of us, that are passing more and more time immersed in a virtual space that merges the physical and the digital experience we have.

[00:08:07] And when we were thinking about our employees' experience, we were thinking how most of them are young people. Some of them are from generation Z, and generation Z is a generation that is growing in the metaverse. So we just tried to understand what were their expectations then, and we understood that generation Z was looking for a place where they could stay most part of their time. Relationships were strengthened in the metaverse.

[00:08:53] They feel more authentic and free to explore who they really are, and they feel that games improve mental health and help them express themselves even offline, because of the type of experience they have online. So it seems to be a good solution for weme, don't you think? The metaverse allows generations to dream and create a world worth living. So it seems to connect with weme's idea of how to offer a nice employee experience for ours. And the metaverse is not an escape but an extension of the reality.

The challenge: prototyping an accessible metaverse

[00:09:39] So okay, we can believe in metaverse, but how could we put it in practice? So we understood that people in the future may use metaverse to buy things, to socialize, and to work in the metaverse. But how can we make it happen? Is it possible today, or what can be done, can we imagine that maybe we still don't have the resources to deliver a metaverse experience for all our employees, but how can we come closer to it and have the benefits of this type of immersion?

[00:10:31] So we always knew that our employee experience would reflect our client experience, but we were already spread in Brazil, in different places of Brazil, with different resources of connectivity, with different technological gadgets, and we couldn't offer the same experience for each wemer if we decided to use a 3D immersive virtual environment. So it would not be actionable in the daily routine in our projects.

[00:11:19] So we had a challenge: how might we prototype an accessible metaverse to empower our team collaboration? And when I say accessible, it may be a low fidelity solution that could give me some insights of what is important for employee experience in a virtual space, and some insights about how would it be in a real metaverse in the future.

Building a city in Gather

[00:11:56] So today we are using Gather, and we are remote first. We have built a whole city in Gather, and this is part of our company in Gather. This is our office and this is where we stay most part of the time.

[00:12:19] So this is an example of when we have an avatar and then we can walk through different rooms and talk with different people, and we can make workshops. We can have a room and divide people into different tables for them to collaborate, and they can come together again. After group collaboration they can come together and then they can separate themselves in groups again. So we decided to use this platform and we have some learnings about this that have impacted our employee experiences.

[00:13:03] And this is an example of the whole vision of the office. We have some other places like a beach in the backyard. We have the city with other buildings, with our clients. And we have some secret spaces that people can find here. We have a pet store because we used to have a pet company client. So we have a pet store, and then people have been adapting this space as if it was their space. So they are not users, they are creators of the workspace we have here, and they are putting their identity in the way they build this space with different interactions.

Self expression, spontaneous connection, customization

[00:14:00] So some of our insights are about self expression. So collaborators can express themselves through avatars. They can move around, walk from room to room, they can dance, they can celebrate, they can react to information, and they can customize their workspaces and leave gifts, messages with each other. So if I had the help of a friend in a project, it is common that I can leave a gift on the table of this friend, thanking that person for helping me, and some gifts with a message. It's interesting and it's common, and it's a kind of behavior that emerged from the wemers' interaction.

[00:14:52] So spontaneous connections is one of the most important things I think we have restored for our culture. So we can pass through another wemer in the corridor and we can wave hands and we can ask for a conversation. So we can organize social events, we can participate spontaneously in an event. We can see it's happening and then we can enter there and be part of it. And then we have restored the idea of spontaneous meetings at the coffee machine that usually create cross collaboration between different projects.

[00:15:48] We can imagine and create and customize our space. It is common even for our clients to customize the room they are working in. And if it is the birthday of a member of the team that is working on a project, it is common to put a cake, a birthday cake, on the table, and then everybody that passes there can enter the room and can say, hey, happy birthday, and make some nice wishes.

Belonging, ceremonies and the numbers

[00:16:27] So we have engaged our team not just in their jobs but especially in connecting with each other, and they created a connection that creates more synergy in working on projects together. So I think that we have increased the confidence, and they are engaging with creating important ceremonies. So we have a happy new year ceremony. Each three months we have a special ceremony, that is a ceremony where we can see what we have achieved in the last three months, and we can celebrate together.

[00:17:26] And we have the sense of belonging between the wemers. So with more interactions, not just in projects and not just in scheduled meetings, we have created these spontaneous meetings that are not just for job but especially for joy. And then they can share their problems, their challenges and their successes in their projects, and they usually feel they are more connected. The sense of belonging and the owner behavior is stronger now than before, even for the ones who have arrived after the pandemic period and have never been together before.

[00:18:25] And we have moments to learn and share. As organizations and individuals we are always learning, and this space provides different opportunities to spontaneously find people and share opinions and learn something interesting. So we can share thoughts with each other, we can create events, and we can have quick insights that can help us how to innovate in our projects. And we don't leave fun out of the work. So we have a lot of fun moments in our job and we have competitions, and this is an example of a kart racing in our projects. And a curiosity is that this guy in this kart racing is the CEO[?] that is participating in the competition.

[00:19:24] So this is the kind of environment we have been creating at weme, and these are some of the numbers we have achieved or maintained using this kind of solution to deliver a better employee experience. We have 40% growth each year since 2017, we have a 90 NPS number, and we have a pulse of 4.3. Pulse is a measure that we use each week to understand how our satisfaction and emotions are in working on that week. So this is the average we have maintained since we have used this environment to work together.

[00:20:28] Now I can answer some of your questions. And it would be interesting to receive some of you visiting us, so you can register your interest to visit together in this code on your screen.

Q&A

[00:20:51] Host: Excellent. That's a really innovative way of doing it. So thanks very much for sharing the concepts there. Yeah, if anybody has any questions, please do write them in again on UXDX or on YouTube, LinkedIn, whichever platform you're using. So I have a few questions that we could start with. One of the things that I was looking at is, with Gather, one of the points is that it's great in that you can kind of walk up to people, have a chat with them, like you're kind of almost replicating an office. Does that mean that you're working all day with your cameras on, and does that lead to any challenges?

[00:21:36] Victor: You're not working all day with cameras on. When you are alone, your camera usually gets off, and then when someone arrives you can turn it on, but you are notified and then you can turn it on. And then you can decide to put the camera on all the time, but usually it closes when there is nobody next to you.

[00:21:59] Host: Okay. And is there a sense of, because I know when some people were trying that out amongst other solutions, there was a sense of, your boss is spying on you, because they'll walk around and just make sure people are at their desks and things like that.

[00:22:15] Victor: Maybe it would happen in another culture of company. But I think that at weme we have a very nice culture, that people feel they are in a secure place. So I think it's not a sense, it would not be caused because of the platform, you know. I think that it's something more related with the culture, or other kinds of control tools, something like this.

[00:22:53] Host: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I guess just back to the original premise of the metaverse, and I think you gave some stats about how many people an hour a day by 2025. Is that really going to happen? Because I think the metaverse has been one of these things almost like crypto or something, or NFTs, where people kept saying they're going to be huge but it just didn't really happen, or it hasn't happened yet.

[00:23:23] Victor: I think that it will happen. But I think that if you will see the Gartner hype cycle, the metaverse seems to be in the beginning, and to achieve the productivity plateau is something with more than 10 years to happen. So we are doing today an effort to prototype, creating environments and observing how people are behaving in this environment, how they are bringing the resources that are there, and how they are using it to do whatever they want. So this is the kind of observation we are applying in this environment, you know. And I think that until the metaverse be the common thing for everyone, we have a lot to experiment, we have a lot of things to prototype, we have a lot of things to learn. So we are just trying to create this type of experiences in our daily routine.

[00:24:47] Host: Makes sense. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I guess there's some of the things, I'm always optimistic about the future, so looking forward to seeing what comes from it. But yeah, I think that's it for the questions coming in. So we'll finish up. Thank you very much again for sharing how you work. It was really good to get an insight about how you structured your offices and things like that. I always find that really interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:25:15] Victor: Yes, I...