Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.
Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.
Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.
Alternatively, by classifying themselves as remote, workers agree they can no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company.
Business Insider claims it has seen internal Dell tracking data that reveals nearly 50 percent of the workforce opted to accept the consequences of staying remote, undermining Dell’s plan to restore its in-office culture.
The publication spoke with a dozen Dell employees to hear their stories as to why they chose to stay remote, and a variety of reasons came up. Some said they enjoyed more free time and less strain on their finances after going remote, and nothing could convince them to give that up now. Others said their local offices had closed since the pandemic or that they weren’t interested in promotions.
Others still noted that it seemed pointless to go in to an in-person office when the teams they worked on were already distributed across multiple offices around the world, so they’d mostly still be on Zoom calls anyway.
One person said they’d spoken with colleagues who had chosen to go hybrid, and those colleagues reported doing work in mostly empty offices punctuated with video calls with people who were in other mostly empty offices.
Many interviewed admitted they were looking for work at other companies that aren’t trying to corral employees back into the office.
Dell is not the only company struggling with this. For example, we’ve reported several times on Apple’s internal struggles and employee revolts over remote work.
Executive management at the companies trying to restore in-person work culture claim that working together in a physical space allows for greater collaboration and innovation.
Research on this topic has offered mixed insights, but there does seem to be some consensus that remote work is accompanied by very modest drops in productivity—for example, a working study at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research suggested around a 10 percent drop in productivity, even as it noted that the cost-saving benefits of remote work could make up for some of that.
Starting in May, Dell employees who are fully remote will not be eligible for promotion, Business Insider (BI) reported Saturday. The upcoming policy update represents a dramatic reversal from Dell’s prior stance on work from home (WFH), which included CEO Michael Dell saying: “If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you’re doing it wrong.”
Dell employees will mostly all be considered “remote” or “hybrid” starting in May, BI reported. Hybrid workers have to come into the office at least 39 days per quarter, Dell confirmed to Ars Technica, which equates to approximately three times a week. Those who would prefer to never commute to an office will not “be considered for promotion, or be able to change roles,” BI reported.
“For remote team members, it is important to understand the trade-offs: Career advancement, including applying to new roles in the company, will require a team member to reclassify as hybrid onsite,” Dell’s memo to workers said, per BI.
Dell didn’t respond to specific questions Ars Technica sent about the changes but sent a statement saying: “In today’s global technology revolution, we believe in-person connections paired with a flexible approach are critical to drive innovation and value differentiation.”
BI said it saw a promotion offer that a remote worker received that said that accepting the position would require coming into an “approved” office, which would mean that the employee would need to move out of their state.
Dell used to be pro-WFH
Dell’s history with remote workers started before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 10 years ago. Before 2020, 65 percent of Dell workers were already working remotely at least one day per week, per a blog that CEO Michael Dell penned via LinkedIn in September 2022. An anonymous Dell worker who reportedly has been remote for over 10 years and that BI spoke with estimated that 10 to 15 percent “of every team was remote” at Dell.
Michael Dell used to be a WFH advocate. In his 2022 blog post, he addressed the question of whether working in an office created “an advantage when it comes to promotion, performance, engagement or rewards,” determining:
At Dell, we found no meaningful differences for team members working remotely or office-based even before the pandemic forced everyone home. And when we asked our team members again this year, 90 percent of them said everyone has the opportunity to develop and learn new skills in our organization. The perception of unequal opportunity is just one of the myths of hybrid work …
At the time, Dell’s chief described the company as “committed to allow team members around the globe to choose the work style that best fits their lifestyle—whether that is remote or in an office or a blend of the two.” But the upcoming limitations for fully remote workers could be interpreted as Dell discouraging workers from working from home.
“We’re being forced into a position where either we’re going to be staying as the low man on the totem pole, first on the chopping block when it comes to workforce reduction, or we can be hybrid and go in multiple days a week, which really affects a lot of us,” an anonymous employee told BI.
Dell’s new WFH policy follows the February 2023 layoffs of about 6,650 workers, or around 5 percent of employees. Unnamed employees that BI spoke with showed concerns that the upcoming policy is an attempt to get people to quit so that Dell can save money on human resources without the severance costs of layoffs. Others are concerned that the rule changes will disproportionately affect women.
Meanwhile, the idea of return-to-office mandates helping businesses is being challenged. For example, a study by University of Pittsburgh researchers of some S&P 500 businesses found that return-to-office directives hurt employee morale and do not boost company finances.
Virbela has grown a lot over time but they’ve had the same avatar system for nearly a decade. If you open the app today, you’ll see a whole new avatar system. As impressive as it is, it might still have some growing to do.
Long in the Making
Virbela is a platform for remote work, education, and events. The platform consists of an open campus that anyone can download and use for free, and private campuses co-created with clients.
There was nothing wrong with the old campus, but it got a whole lot of new features as well as a beautiful graphics upgrade showcased at the Hands In Enterprise Metaverse Summit last year. An upcoming avatar system was teased at the summit, but no release date was given.
“Avatars are important to the virtual experience because they add fidelity to the world,” Virbela Art Team Manager Nicole Galinato said at the event. “Our users love the playfulness of the current avatars, but they want more features that they can identify with.”
Since the summit, the old avatars roamed the new world. It wasn’t a glaring mismatch, but the avatars were definitely from a different generation. The new avatars certainly fit into the graphically updated virtual world a lot better.
Old avatar (left) vs new avatar (right)
The New You for the New Virbela
The next time that you boot up Virbela, whether you’re a first-time user or just returning after a while, you will be greeted by the first page of the new avatar generator. Just like with the old system, you can join immediately with a default avatar and personalize it later if you want. If you’re not in that much of a hurry, you have a lot of playing to do.
You select one of three “body types” rather than gender, so all clothing and cosmetic options are open to all users. There’s also a custom gradient for specific skin tones and a number of features have an “advanced settings” button that opens up menus of highly customizable sliders. The update also brings several more hair and facial hair options.
“What really pushed us to create this new avatar system was more about this idea of inclusion and equity,” Virbela co-founder and President Alex Howland told me on the XR Talks podcast. “We are working with a very global population of users and we know the importance of the avatar for people to express themselves and explore their identity through their avatar.”
The update also brings new clothing options and customizations. Many outfits consist of a “top” and a “bottom,” with the top consisting of several layers each with their own color combinations, similar to the system that AltspaceVR used (RIP Altspace). I went with the three-piece suite, which means color options for the jacket, vest, and shirt. (Neckties are under “Accessories”.)
“We also wanted much more variability in terms of the ability to customize the avatar because we sometimes have populations of many thousands in the same space and you’d find too many avatars that looked too similar to one another,” said Howland.
Even after you’ve toured your new avatar through the campus, you can change it at any time by selecting the gear icon in the upper right corner to open the settings dropdown menu and selecting the “change avatar” item at the top. And do keep checking back. According to Howland, more is coming.
“This is what I’ll call the [minimal viable product] of this new system. It’s a system that we can build upon and continue to add assets to, whether that be more hairstyles, more clothing options, more cultural garb, that folks can use over time – eventually leading to things like more facial expressions,” said Howland.
The Complete Package
To return to Galinato’s concept that the avatars contribute to the immersion of the world itself, the more detailed and more personal avatars do seem more at home in the more detailed and responsive Virbela campus. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to attend a large event with the new avatars, but I’m sure that they’ll be a lot more colorful now.
Arthur, an immersive virtual collaboration platform for enterprise, has recently rolled out its first major set of updates since its “Pro” version launched in 2021. The update brings solutions that are helpful in the platform but that VR in general has needed for a long time.
To learn more about the platform’s growth in the space and the technology coming of age in the enterprise sector, I met in the platform with Arthur Business Development Consultant Lakshman Lattipally. We also showed off our full-body avatars and explored the platform’s many features both old and new.
The Road So Far
Arthur was founded in 2016 but became publicly available in 2020. The platform rolled out its first major updates the following year, which is when ARPost first introduced our readers to the platform. At the time, the company was largely presented as a “virtual real estate company” before that language was adopted by consumer applications in the NFT space.
“We see ourselves as a virtual real estate company. We just provide the office,” Demand Manager Simon Berger told ARPost at the time.
At the time, the company seemed to be doing a new thing – just like everyone else. The main distinguishing feature between Arthur and other solutions in what has since been dubbed “the officeverse” were the avatars featuring a photo-realistic face on a poorly-matched and semi-corporeal frame.
Later that year, the platform’s professional version came out of beta. This version introduced more hosting tools, larger capacity spaces, screen sharing, and other productivity features, and – perhaps the largest differentiator – end-to-end session encryption. The free version still works and you can use it to explore the platform. You can also request a demo of the Pro version.
Recent Improvements
Some of Arthur’s most recent updates are completely new tools, while others are developments building on the platform’s existing tools and features. In either case, all of the updates are great advancements.
New Access Options
Arthur has long had desktop access – a website and an app. The website is a sort of back-end way to manage assets for and from the VR version, similar to an AltspaceVR profile. The app offered many of the conveniences of the website and some of the accessibility of the VR version, similar to the desktop version of ENGAGE.
This update brings an option for users to join virtual environments entirely via browser. There are pros and cons to a browser-based virtual collaboration space over an app. For example, the browser interface allows users to use the platform when they’re away from an office computer with the app installed. But, web users can’t join app sessions. At least, not directly.
One of the big updates that Lattipally showed me was the ability of a VR user to open an Arthur browser window and screen share it with VR users creating an entirely virtual version of a hybrid meeting. The solution was a little disorienting but entirely practical.
Of course, that browser window can be used for other things as well. While the pinboard and note features already provided on the platform can be used to create things like workflows and project management boards, your favorite dedicated tools can exist in-world through browser windows or in some cases through direct app integrations.
Display Updates
After all of the shade thrown on earlier iterations of avatars, they really have gotten a lot better in this most recent update. The avatar creation process still starts with a photograph, but that photograph is better mapped onto a better-proportioned head on a full body – complete with arms and legs. The more responsive faces are even compatible with eye tracking if you’ve got it.
My favorite update overall might be the MR desk – a feature that I’ve long wanted in every VR productivity app ever. The tool allows you to draw in your physical desktop to appear in your VR space. This process is similar to when you first set up the Quest’s seated play space. However, the desktop isn’t just an opaque rectangle, it’s a passthrough window to your actual desk.
Other users can’t see this desk, but you can turn it on and off when you need (or don’t need) to access your computer, notes, or anything else in the physical world while in VR. The obvious downside is that this feature is only as useful as your available passthrough. If you have a Quest 2 (review), this isn’t great. But, if you’re rocking a Quest Pro (info), word is it’s a lot better.
Everything Else Is Still Good
A lot of the quality features that Arthur had before are largely unchanged, and that’s okay. Spaces are still beautiful and easy to set up, complete with private audio zones. The larger main menu is still powerful and navigable, but the smaller menus for things like the notes feature and some basic in-world assets are even easier to use.
And, maybe this is just me, but I’m a big fan of the desktop user back-end. Taking screenshots in VR is a simple operation and those screenshots are easily accessible from the web profile. Further, user support is great if you need a helping hand.
The New and Improved Arthur
Arthur is holding its own in the developing world of enterprise VR solutions and remains one of the best offerings that I’ve seen in the space.
One of the most enlightening parts of my time in the platform with Lattipally was his stance on the maturity of the space as he says companies are moving from presence to productivity to complete virtual work environments. And Arthur is rising to that challenge.
ExpressVPN has conducted a survey of 1,500 employees and 1,500 employers to learn about attitudes toward immersive work. Remote collaboration has been one of the biggest promises of immersive technology as it relates to work but employers seem to be more excited than employees. One potential reason: surveillance fears.
Who Wants to Work in the Metaverse?
Remote work was already trending upward before the pandemic. However, as more and more offices closed, remote work started to seem like part of the “new normal.” It was also an explosive opportunity for the immersive tech industry with many promoting the metaverse as the new office water cooler.
While immersive tech gained some traction during this period, video conferencing remains the standard alternative to in-person meetings. About a third of employees and almost as many employers who participated in the survey prefer video conferencing to in-person meetings.
As for immersive meetings, 17% of employers and only 9% of employees surveyed preferred them over other communication methods. So, metaverse was less popular than in-person meetings, video conferencing, instant messaging, and email among employees, but more popular than social media, phone calls, and project management platforms.
On the other hand, it’s interesting that metaverse was the second-preferred method of communication among employers, with video conferencing being the top pick.
Source: ExpressVPN
Why Not Bring Immersive Tech Into the Workplace?
Why the low numbers among employees? First, they aren’t that low. After all, project management platforms were literally designed for remote collaboration, and immersive tech beat them out. And better than the telephone? That’s pretty good for an emerging technology.
Another potential explanation is that most people still haven’t tried an immersive meeting. The survey report didn’t ask (or didn’t include) how many people have experienced a meeting in the metaverse.
While virtual office meetings are becoming more common, they’re still not part of most people’s work week. Further, these platforms are improving but a lot still have hiccups. Even those that work as intended aren’t what most people are used to, which can lead to a learning curve if not plain old friction.
However, the study also found that over half (57%) of polled employees and over three-quarters (77%) of polled employers are interested in immersive work. So, while not all employees are already convinced, a good number of them are at least curious.
There’s still one more reason that employees in particular aren’t sold on the metaverse for meetings. It’s actually a concern that they already have about more conventional remote work solutions.
Surveillance of employees working remotely is already fairly common practice, particularly in large businesses. Immersive technology platforms, particularly those incorporating VR hardware, offer more opportunities for surveillance. Employees seem largely convinced that more opportunity means more abuse.
Sixty-three percent of employees are concerned about data collection, and 61% about being monitored by their employer in the metaverse.
More than half of surveyed employees responded that they’re concerned specifically about real-time location (51%) and real-time screen monitoring (50%). To be fair, under 40% of employers surveyed said that they intended to use emerging technologies in these ways.
Okay, Boomer
Digging too deep into what these numbers mean can be tricky for one more reason. Zany demographic information. Specifically, Boomers. To understand how confusing their responses are, one other piece of demographic information is required: Gen Z is typically the most supportive and least skeptical about the metaverse.
Boomers are the second most curious about the metaverse – they’re also the least excited and the least optimistic about it. They’re the least convinced that it will positively impact productivity but the second most convinced that it will positively impact work performance.
Source: ExpressVPN
They’re the second least concerned about employee surveillance but the most concerned about overall digital privacy and security. Finally, they’re the most excited about remote collaboration and working remotely, but well under half of them think that immersive tech is the future of work.
Does any of that make sense to you? No? That’s a relief.
More Problems With Trust
There’s one more area worth looking at that helps to illustrate the complicated relationship between employees and immersive work. That has to do with trust. Sixty-one percent of respondents trust Microsoft, 58% trust Google, 57% trust Apple, and 36% trust Meta. Most have never heard of other immersive tech companies like Magic Leap and NVIDIA.
That said, Google and Apple are doing very little when it comes to (publicly) developing (the user side of) the metaverse for work. Meanwhile, the most trusted company (Microsoft) and the least trusted company (Meta) are working together on their immersive work strategies. The survey report suggests that this reflects a lack of information on service providers.
The survey report concludes by saying that employers should be wary that trust plays such a large role in adoption and employees – particularly those already familiar with workplace surveillance – just don’t trust employers with immersive technology in the workplace.
Why would employers care about the adoption of immersive technologies? They might not. But, if avoiding enhanced workplace surveillance means that employees work somewhere else, employers may want to think twice about how close an eye they keep on their talent.
The Future? Yes. Tomorrow? No.
Please do read the original survey for yourself. There was a lot in there that we didn’t cover here and there are places where you might be able to make more sense of it.
No matter how one reads the numbers, immersive tech may well be the future of work but it may not be the immediate future of work.
