Hello, I'm Robin Rosenberg and I'm here today to discuss digital remote and virtual work, rethinking the workplace from the ground up and this seems a really good time to be talking about it. As many organizations head to virtual work. Yes, great. OK.Um First, let me tell you a little bit about who I am. I'm Robin Rosenberg. I'm a clinical psychologist and I am CEO and founder of a company called Live In their World that uses virtual reality in part um to address issues of bias and incivility in the workplace and upscale people for respectful engagement. So that's where I'm coming from with my psychology background and the work that I do with VR. And um so we're gonna focus on some of the challenges with remote and hybrid work. So, for instance, uh many of you who've been working through the pandemic in from home or elsewhere know that belonging has been an issue with people who are not in office um in with their colleagues. The issues of equity and inclusion and diversity have been highlighted this year in particular and remote and hybrid work can exacerbate uh those issues, remote and hybrid work make the hiring process a challenge. There have people have been hiring throughout the pandemic and people will continue to hire.

But there is hiring people remotely is creates a different kind of a work force if you will, in the sense of belonging inclusion, being acculturated. Um on boarding is a different process and there's a lot to learn. And when new employees are hired, they can't just roll their chair over to their neighbor and ask a simple question. It it becomes a bigger deal to put it in a slack channel or to make an appointment to ask someone about it. So it, it all these things are, are more hurdles transmitting culture or keeping culture, maintaining, transforming culture become more challenging. Um And the big loser, if you want to think of it that way has been collaborating, that's been much harder to do well in the pandemic.

And people don't feel the collaboration juices in the way that we do in person issues of people management, handling conflict, um handling disrespect, addressing bias. It it becomes more complicated. There's another layer that's added. Um And then leaders and managers have a particular additional burden with remote and hybrid workplaces in terms of uh creating and maintaining equity. Um and an inclusive team, especially with hybrid, by the way, where the issues of being a two tiered system of in person and remote or the people who are here today and people who are not here today, uh managing well, soft skills are ever more important. Supervising work becomes a little more complicated with uh remote and hybrid. And um how do you evaluate employees? How do you evaluate their work when you can't see them? That's been a challenge. And then again, we'll have, we might have a two tiered system as we head into hybrid work and the issue of clarity of communication is always an issue. Um But even more so when you again, you it's not a simple thing to just clarify what someone meant. So the goal really is to rethink whatever your organization is doing or whatever your team is doing.

And as we go forward, it's if this is how I work designing the team or the organization, how would I use technology and not use technology to um improve things to have, have the maximal benefit from employees? So you want to be asking yourself, when is it better for colleagues or business partners or customers to hear each other? Right? That it's audio only is great. That's perfect. More channels of information is not better. When is it better to have the participants see the same thing in real time but not necessarily see each other basically screen share without video. Um When is it better to see each other? And if we need to be seeing each other, why, what information are we wanting? Is it facial expressions? It's just to know who we're talking to or have some sense of how many people is it body language, you can see me gesticulating madly. Um it, what, what are the reasons? And then how can I capture that information? And then when is it best to be physically either interacting with each other or an object? And why again, what are the channels of information that you want? So when is text, textual communication better with the written word, whether it's slack or email or you know, documents um for what tasks and goals is in person, co located interactions best.

And then the, the more challenging question in some sense is how should social time happen and for whom, um just a word about social, one of the things that's lost in its current form from remote or hybrid work or what I call micro interactions. And those are these, you know, less than a minute moments where we can either check in with each other or repair. If there's been some tension in our relationship, let's say we had a team meeting and you and I were on opposite ends of the conversation. We were both very passionate after the meeting. We don't even have to say anything. But if I walk by your workstation and I can, we can smile at each other and that's enough. And we don't really have, have that available in the same way with um remote and, and work from home. And so that those little micro interactions are part of the glue or the serendipitous meetings by the elevator or the coffee area. So there is this sense of how do we, how do we create glue? Um One of the ways that I have discovered uh just because I'm trying to stay up on technology that creates glue is a way of being digitally co located with your colleagues. So there are a number of companies that do variations on this um show you right here. This is a sidekick device that you can see. Hopefully you can see my cursor right here.

It's like a tablet size and your your team or some other team that you're interacting with. However many people there are, you can see little videos of them and you know, when they're available and you can just click on it to talk to them in the same sense of rolling your chair over. So it creates that sense of of co location and team this or you can just hop into another team and you know, different companies do it slightly differently, but there are um technical solutions to some of the problems. Again, it may or may not be as good. I mean, the advantage is you're not hearing all your your coworkers talking and clack clacking and phones ringing. Um So if you want quiet space and you have that at home or wherever else you are, um you can get the best of both worlds, there's augmented reality. Um So I'll just run this while I talk to you. Augmented Reality is super imposing uh digital objects if you will on reality. So this is a case where he this man is, is circling something on his phone. And he's actually sharing that via a facetime like uh app so that the other person at the other end who's remote can see it and they can interact about it and share and it's great for uh remote service calls if you will. So that's a really cool thing.

There are many other instances of it but you, you can actually interact with the um the, the digital piece if you will. Um another augmented reality that I'll just kind of breeze through. This is one of the original type of use cases for A R that shows its utility. Here, there's someone who's do you know, connecting some technical specs and on the left, he has to keep looking at the instruction manual on the right. He's wearing a R glasses that are telling him the next step. So he doesn't have to keep turning and reading and, and going back and you can see how much faster it is the um for him to be able to be finished. There you go. He was much faster. So A R is cool. It doesn't have as many uh psychological, psychologically enhancing applications as uh VR and Mr which we're gonna talk about in a minute. So virtual reality, virtual reality is what you put on goggles and a headset and you are there, it, you've, you're totally immersed in the experience and your brain actually registers the experience is real. We know from neuroscience uh data. And so it's terrific for upskilling soft skills.

So what I'm gonna show you now is a video just to give you a slice of, of what it can do. This is from our company. This is um you are about to be Javante who's a 35 year old black man and you are literally sitting in his seat in his body. So if you look down, you would see a black man's hands and um just

to show you has some serious problems, they're turning me for answers. I was hoping that you could give me some insight to help me solve these pressing problems. Let me give you some context. The marketing department is trying to increase customer engagement and they've noticed that African Americans aren't buying the products and services at the same rate as other minority groups. We thought that because you're African American, that you could maybe help us to communicate more effectively with uh your people and then, you know, hopefully get them to buy more products and services. Do you think you can help us with that?

So here we're illustrating the various levels of microaggression um in, in this and, and, and then we'll be upskilling people. Um But VR is incredibly powerful to see this and be J day in this situation. Um VR is also handy for many of the uh sort of interactional challenges that I mentioned before. So in a headset, you can really feel co located with your colleagues, every person puts in um avatar uh creates their own avatar. Here, they're actually interacting with other objects, they can be interacting with each other. And uh here they're interaction with their virtual whiteboard and people put their names above it. And so it, it can really offer a true way to both collaborate, increase engagement and belonging here.

They, you can literally pass over a piece of paper which is pretty cool. Uh So this is VR and let me show you mixed reality, which is a combination of reality and um digital reality, sort of like A R. But you can interact with the digital objects in a way that you can't in A R. So the Microsoft Hololens is an example. So let me show you. So here he put on the headset and they again feel co located. They, this is nice as someone who my desktop always has a zillion things on it. It really gives you more space, more work space without having to clean up the table. Um So here is someone else who's in a um a headset popping in. So again, they're colo they're looking together at information they're adding to it, they can sort of touch objects together and um I, I it's a, it's a lovely alternative and provides some of the benefits. I just, again, it's really cool and there's, it's more than two people.

You're about to see another colleague who's in the office. Come in. He has a headset. Now it's a three way meeting. So that's um some of mixed reality. He's, and there you go. Um So the idea, again, as you're thinking about technology in this women tech conference is really rethinking everything. So for what tasks and goal is video as we know it good or, or better for what tasks and goals is virtual or mixed reality, good or better. Let me review um some of these advantages. So for stem type work for engineering, for construction, for co creation of physical things, it is fantastic because um you, you don't have to spend hours building, let's say an architectural model and find out that one little piece has to change and then you have 10 hours worth of work.

Um So even just for constructing it for yourself, it's, it's an advantage. It's terrific because you can have simulations. So for surgeons, for pilots, for anything where the the cost of actual practice, if you will uh is high. If you make a mistake, simulations are fantastic, you can do it over and over again with variants. I mean, that's even with soft, soft skills training and providing awareness, which is what I'm more familiar with. Um It again, allows you that opportunity to make mistakes in private and versus in public, you can anonymize people's identity with hi, when hiring, which is great. You can have someone have a purple alien head and disguise their voice. You know, there are many opportunities to, to mask um applicants, identity, demographic identity. And you know, if you didn't know any of that information on their CV, if that was hidden as well, it's great. So you can really um high or blind, so to speak. Um You can become virtually or digitally co located which can enhance engagement and belonging. The collaboration allows for typically better collaboration experience than we've had. And with an Mr or VR headset as of now, there's no multitasking. So I'm probably down the road, there will be, you know, you can get text messages and emails and phone calls, but for right now you can't.

And so when someone is in the headset, they are fully paying attention to whatever is happening as much, you know, maybe they're off in their own head, but there's no other external stimuli impinging. Um And you can even do virtual focus groups, getting together a room of folks who might otherwise not be able to be in a room. Um And then of course, face to face meetings. Now there are disadvantages. Uh you have to wear a headset and wearing a headset for a long period of time is often not particularly comfortable. So there's that. So you want to be judicious about when you're doing it. Um And as of now, you can't multitask. So if you need to be triaging email or, you know, doing other things that can be a problem um in the same way that people being able to anonymize their identity is, you might think you're interacting, you know, with Tom from Saint Louis, but it's actually not Tom from Saint Louis and whatever that means, um You cannot see people's facial expressions.

So what you're seeing is a really uh either their avatar or a photorealistic version of them, but you're not seeing their visual experience nor their real body movements, you're seeing sort of from when they move in space, but you're not getting the body language. So again, it's, well, what's the information that I'm wanting? What are the information channels if I'm not getting facial expression? Is that a good way to have a one on one conversation about a very challenging topic? Um It can be expensive to get headsets and support uh remote workers. And there's always the question of, are they distributed equitably? Um And at some point, humans get involved and that's always a problem because then you get all of the, the sort of biased and, and weirdness and um stuff like that. So let me take some of the questions um from Bruna. Yes. The, the VR is meant to be upsetting. Um I didn't, I hope that it it, it got, the idea is really to help people understand what it is um to walk in the world from different demographic groups. That's actually what we're trying to do. But also upscale people awareness only is not particularly helpful in developing new behaviors. Um Thank you uh about the VR I wonder what the psychological impact is of a VR Workday, Michelle? Excellent question and the answer is um mixed.

So most people would not advocate a full work day in VR. It, it's really hard on the face. Uh There are many companies using Mr today. Um Let me just loop up with the VR question because I don't know exactly how it works in terms of how long I can take questions. Um So the VR piece, there's a difference between people volunteering versus being compelled to do it, which is a whole other issue. So I don't, this is just a summary. Um And if I don't have time to answer your questions, feel free to email me the um again, I wouldn't have a whole VR work day. It's like thinking for what is VR best and, and only use it for that and if other things would work for other tasks, other goals, use other technology or no technology. Um Are there any companies using Mr today? Yes. So Mr is a really interesting training for a variety of um well, many things that have VR but you also want people seeing real life. Mmr is the best. So there's a very cool uh surgical training where there's, there are dummies and you're wearing it and you can see in the dummy. So the dummy is real but, but things kind of pop out at you in Mr, I'm, I'm not explaining it.

Well, um they're all different kinds of Mr training and I would suggest that you look online and just choose using mixed reality, you know, what, what companies are using mixed reality in the, in the work. Um There are many ways to use it and, and as I mentioned, not the least of which is just cleaning up your desktop or your desk because you have now so much more space to spread out and then you can just put it away when you take off the headset. I think I'm out of time. Um But I'm happy again to take questions and, um, I, you know, I, I can go uh pleasure. So, yeah, so this was just a summary going back to the original topics and as you can see, there are ways to address these issues. So thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time and uh stay healthy and I hope to meet you at some point.