Technically HR: Got ‘Zoom fatigue’? Microsoft is betting VR meetings might help

The concept of “Zoom fatigue” is real. A recent study of university students found detrimental effects to participants’ fatigue levels after video conferencing on apps like Zoom, Teams, and Google Hangouts.

Our virtual and flexible world of work also poses significant challenges for employers and HR pros: team cohesion, employee isolation, communication woes, and costs associated with travel bringing disparate employees together. Microsoft is betting virtual reality may help address some of these concerns.

“We’ve done a ton of work over the last few years to make these hybrid meetings now more effective and more inclusive,” said Microsoft’s Nicole Herskowitz, VP of Teams. “But what we also know is that to really have a truly flexible workplace, employees are going to just need new technologies that help them feel more connected.”

Microsoft is bringing its VR technology—Microsoft Mesh—to Teams, allowing for three-dimensional immersive experiences for Teams meetings.

“We’ve reimagined the way employees can come together, and we’re bringing it into the place where hundreds of millions of people work every day: Microsoft Teams,” Herskowitz said.

Mesh, she said, allows for “out of the box” VR experiences for companies to hold meetings in a new and dynamic way. It’s ideal for training sessions, onboarding, all-hands meetings, and team bonding activities, according to Herskowitz.

The barrier to entry for experimenting or using the experience is low. The VR experience in Teams works without special hardware. Your employees can join using Teams on their laptops. The spaces are equipped with audio zones and spatial audio features that allow for a more IRL listening experience. The idea is that if your colleague is in another “audio zone,” you won’t hear her, for instance. Your coworker to the right of you will sound like she’s on your right, and the fella to your left will sound like he’s to your left.

Meeting leaders, Herskowitz said, can transform the room’s artwork into a presentation slide deck or pose a question to the room for participants to discuss in a breakout session.

Herskowitz noted that a VR headset can provide an elevated immersive experience. The feature will be available in Teams this week as an “immersive experience 3D” option, with a handful of preset meeting spaces such as the lake house or the oasis. HR pros looking to customize the meeting rooms can do so with a toolkit that doesn’t require any coding, Herskowitz said. Those who are looking for a bespoke VR meeting setting can use a Unity coding solution.

Zoom in. During the onset of the pandemic, Accenture, like nearly every other employer, needed to quickly rethink crucial in-person meetings, like onboarding. The company turned to Microsoft’s Mesh as an early adopter of the tech in “private preview” before it was released for general availability.

“At Accenture our documented purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we thought about onboarding in the past and how it can be quite passive,” said Katy Geraghty, global head of onboarding at Accenture. “You learn things on a slide where it can be boring, and we thought, what better way to actually immerse new joiners in our purpose.”

Now new hires at Accenture across the globe all share in the same 3D onboarding experience. The onboarding experience is two days, one fully immersed in a virtual theme park.

“It really was designed with the new joiner in mind,” Geraghty said. “How do we really help our new joiners explore who we are as a company: What is our culture? What are our core values? What is our purpose? So they ‘walk’ around ‘One Accenture Park,’ and it’s these exhibits that they can actually experience different things.”

Olly Jeffers Accenture’s onboarding innovation lead pointed to the first exhibit new hires experience, a VR zip line. New employees learn about Accenture’s code of business ethics as they gear up to zip line down “Leadership Essentials Mountain” into the theme park.

“We use these analogies, examples, pneumonic devices throughout all of the NG Expo [new joiner expo] to really get the new joiner to remember something,” said Jeffers, who helped lead the experience’s design. “There’s many, many exhibits inside of there that use these kinds of different devices to do the learning.”

Accenture’s experience is custom to the organization, and has been developed over the course of years. But Microsoft’s Herskowitz said other users are leaning on the feature for internal networking and company culture, and you don’t need a theme park to reap the benefits of virtual reality.