HR challenges in virtual worlds: manage the risks when employees join virtual communities

HR Magazine, Nov, 2007 by Eric Krell

Claus Nehmzow, a member of PA Consulting Group's management team, was testing the voice functions in the online community Second Life when he read an interesting response from a virtual employee.

Nehmzow typed a message to one of the virtual greeters his firm hired to interact with visitors to PA Consulting's Second Life offices, asking her if she could hear his voice. "She typed back, 'Sorry, I cannot because I am deaf,'" recalls Nehmzow, who leads the organization's applications of virtual worlds. "I didn't know she was deaf until that point, and it didn't matter."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The exchange explains why Nehmzow describes virtual worlds such as Second Life as "the ultimate nondiscriminatory medium." Like a growing number of firms, PA Consulting taps the medium to recruit real-life employees, foster collaboration among a geographically dispersed workforce, collaborate with customers and hire "in-world" Second Life employees, who are paid in the realm's currency of Lindens, currently trading at an exchange rate of 270 Lindens to one U.S. dollar.

Although Nehmzow has not encountered any HR-related problems with his virtual team of Second Life greeters, he is now researching the firm's responsibilities should a greeter experience real problems on the virtual job.

As he should, says labor and employment law attorney and HR consultant Dave Elchoness. "An employment relationship with a greeter in Second Life is almost more complicated than the relationship with a regular employee who might go online any time someone enters the company's virtual offices," says Elchoness. "You may be hiring someone ... you don't know anything about."

Hardly a Luddite, Elchoness operates a virtual law office in Second Life and says that virtual worlds eventually "will be used as a communications medium that is the next best thing to visiting in person."

But he insists that HR managers should not let their companies enter virtual realms blind to potentially serious risks.

"On one hand, this medium opens a huge number of opportunities," Elchoness says. "On the other hand, unless you go into it with your eyes wide open, you can run into some unsavory characters and situations."

Endless Opportunities

IBM refers to Second Life and its ilk as "virtual social worlds." PA Consulting uses the broader term "participatory media," while others prefer "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," "multiplayer online games," or the "3-D Internet." The variance reflects the fact that the maturation of virtual worlds is just a few seconds into what will be a long journey, according to IBM.

In virtual worlds, participants use and often create online characters or avatars as proxies to explore the world and interact with other characters.

Business users of these worlds should pay close attention to two crucial characteristics of any virtual world:

* The degree content within the online world is user-created.

* The degree access to the virtual world, and specific locations within the virtual world, are public or private.

Many virtual experts would refer to Entropia Universe, for example, as a game rather than a virtual world because participants or players do not create content. Second Life, on the other hand, looks much like an online video game with existence almost entirely shaped by participants. A change an individual avatar makes within Second Life potentially affects the virtual experience of other Second Life participants.

Although Second Life, overseen by Linden Labs, has recently developed more usage guidelines, users have much more free rein in what they can and cannot do compared with other virtual worlds, such as There.com. Partly for that reason, There.com has attracted educational organizations and commercial users, such as MTV, presumably drawn to the world's provisions on acceptable behavior and intellectual property protection. Even so, Second Life remains by far the largest virtual world in terms of user population--2 million and growing at last count--and companies can and do restrict access to their private spaces within Second Life.

Software firms, such as Forterra Systems of San Mateo, Calif., also produce virtual world platforms that companies, such as IBM and others, can operate privately behind their corporate firewalls.

Although some large companies, such as Toyota, Circuit City and Sears, made headlines when they unveiled offices and offerings in Second Life that were mainly marketing initiatives, business users now seem more excited about uses that, as Nehmzow says, "can have very positive effects in HR situations."

Characters Welcome

Some companies already realize the benefits of doing business in a virtual environment. PA Consulting analyst Alex Kingsbury joined the firm in September 2006, several months after attending a recruiting session in the firm's Second Life offices. His avatar impressed PA Consulting's staff with sharp questions and playful wit. The event took place in a tree-lined skybox perched 1,300 feet above PA Consulting's Second Life office. A greater number of senior-level PA Consulting staff attended the virtual recruiting session than could attend a traditional, in-person event.