Proponents of virtual reality are bringing immersive anti-sexual harassment training to a metaverse near you. Real-world humans who have experienced the metaverse—and those who say they have been subjected to sexual harassment in the metaverse, in one case, within a minute of logging on—might give this idea some serious side-eye.
VR’s virtues: VR company Vantage Point has been developing immersive sexual-harassment training for clients since its founding in 2017. The company’s CEO, Morgan Mercer, told Fast Company in 2019 that traditional methods hadn’t delivered “engagement with the material [or] the ability to apply learning to real-life environments and situations.” Indeed, advocates point to research suggesting employees retain more information through VR training than traditional modules.
Full immersion: Vantage Point and Sisu, two VR training platforms, ask employees to put themselves inside simulated workplace harassment incidents.
In Sisu’s version, employees complete the immersive games in 15-minute blocks over the span of roughly two hours, Protocol reports, where they roleplay as victims, offenders, or observers. Sisu’s marketing materials describe the training as “real cases” designed to help employees “learn to handle realistic situations” where participants will analyze how their “actions may affect [their] circumstances—for better or worse!”
On Vantage Point’s platform, which uses photorealistic characters “to heighten the emotional stakes” of the experience, Mercer told Protocol, “Much like in the real world, the things that you do influence the outcome you have, and so if you speak up sooner, things get better.”
But how real is too real? According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime.
Claire Schmidt, CEO and founder of AllVoices, a platform that allows employees to anonymously report sexual harassment, discrimination, and bias to management, surveyed employees and found that 50% had been harassed and reported it to “a manager, to HR, or to an ombudsperson or third party. ” But still, many do not: 20.9% of female respondents and 14.8% of male respondents said they experienced harassment but didn’t report it.
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Schmidt worries that using immersive, realistic tech to simulate harassment could unintentionally do harm.
“There’s a huge number of people who have had these types of experience, from sexual harassment to even sexual assault, and companies aren’t always aware of what their employees have experienced,” Schmidt said. “When I hear about something like this, I’m hopeful that technology can be part of the solution…for addressing these issues proactively…[but] a lot of thought needs to be put into how to keep people safe, how to make sure you're not triggering PTSD by putting them in a situation that is similar to something traumatic they’ve experienced in the past—especially given how realistic these VR platforms and programs are.”
Even if it’s for the purpose of training, immersion can feel real. Chanelle Siggens, a woman who reported being groped in VR, told the New York Times, “When something bad happens, when someone comes up and gropes you, your mind is tricking you into thinking it’s happening in the real world.”
Sisu’s code of ethics addresses the possibility of trauma directly, stating that the platform aims to “be virtually real enough (e.g., first-person, realistic settings, etc) so that they engage users emotionally but not so virtually real that they traumatize them (e.g., text-box prompts artificially limit user choice as many VRET simulations do).”
Still, Schmidt said if employers do choose to use VR, the best route is to allow employees the option to opt out and complete a different type of training, no questions asked.—SV
Correction, April 15, 2022: An earlier version of this article stated that Vantage Point and Sisu ask employees to play first-person decision games. The article has been updated to reflect that these scenarios are not always first-person and are simulated incidents, not games.
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