Onboarding Employees in the Metaverse: The HR Perspective

Creating a virtual environment in which people worldwide can access and live is central to the metaverse concept. The COVID-19 crisis expedited the development of this technology. Metaverse is now being seen as an answer to the problem that was created during the pandemic when there was a need to connect while keeping the social norms of physical distancing. Organizations seem to be grappling with the absence of face-to-face interaction that is necessary for working and cultivating team dynamics and see the metaverse as a tool that can fill this gap. However, the technology is still in its nascent stage, and like every technology, it has its shortcomings. In this paper, we have used both primary and secondary resources to understand the impact of the metaverse on organizations, especially the HR functions, where the interaction happens the most, right from the start of the interview to induction to the final onboarding of employees. Through semi-structured interviews, we ought to find out the perspective of HR Managers using these technologies in their company for such HR processes. Also using secondary data sources like research papers and articles published in reputed journals and magazines we intend to understand the extent to which this technology is being discussed in public and the future research agenda.