The new works of the Metaverse (and even the avatar risks mobbing and stress) – Corriere.it

Office meetings in virtual rooms, avatars interacting with customers how committed of digital stores, sellers or financial advisors. Without forgetting the event organizers who will take care of fashion shows and exhibitions 3.0 or HR experts who will hire avatar-candidates Worldwide. If today work in the metaverse appears as a distant reality, in the future more and more people will seek employment and work in what Mark Zuckerberg has defined as a large immersive platform.

Metaverse economy: 5 trillion dollars by 2030

A digital universe that, according to a recent McKinsey survey, will grow rapidly: will be worth up to $5 trillion by 2030 with e-commerce taking the lion’s share (2.6 trillion). Key sectors also include virtual learning (270 billion), advertising (206 billion) and gaming (125 billion). We are talking about a revolution that is already translating into experimentation on several fronts. Just think that last November the Randstad Italia employment agency opened its first office in the metaverse: a four-story virtual building dedicated to training events, meetings and interviews.

The risk of abuse and the Wild West

Given that the metaverse remains a bet still to be won (and that its construction is underway), it is clear that part of the future of work will be played out in this new version of the digital world. So that one wonders what risks exist for workers in this new parallel universe, currently devoid of rules.
The debate in the United States and the United Kingdom is heated and both HR managers of companies and labor lawyers are wondering about the danger of the digital far west, worried by the lack of protection for meta-employees and others. He says the lawyer Cristiano Cominotto, co-chair of the International Labor & Employment Law Committee of the American Bar Association (ABA): The metaverse represents and will represent a revolution in the future: the workplace, from being physical, will become more and more virtual. Which opens up to complex scenarios, potential risks or abuses. I think of mobbing, allo straining (workplace stress caused by excessive workloads and exasperating demands from bosses, ed) to sexual harassment.

The daily risks on the Metaverse

The main risk that with the disappearance of physical interaction becomes a lot difficult to limit vexatious behavior in the company that trigger the conflict. The metaverse – explains the lawyer – could make the communication mechanisms of companies more complex, especially between bosses and subordinates. I am referring to the micro-harassments often underestimated in Italy and for which protections are already scarce in our country today. Without exaggerating, think, for example, of the continuous criticisms of a superior whose repetition, day after day, can trigger psychological problems. According to the lawyer, our country suffers from a real regulatory vacuum on this pointor also linked to cultural backwardness in the workplace where the importance of workplace well-being is often underestimated. At the legislative level – adds Cominotto – it is necessary to understand how to regulate any illicit behavior in the metaverse and what degree of gravity to attribute to them compared to the equivalent behavior in the real world. Whether it’s bullying between avatars or harassment between colleagues in a digital version.

The concept of Avatar and digital identity

Then there are doubts about the use of avatars and the link with privacy and transparency. Legal experts are wondering how to verify a person’s identity in the metaverse not only during working hours but also during interviews or in interactions with customers. The question is the identity linked to the avatar of the worker. Must it be consistent with the ethnicity, gender and age of the natural person or can it be possible to create alternative ones, to some extent deceiving any interlocutors, whether they are colleagues or customers?, she concludes.