Mattering in the metaverse: Re-imagining inclusive futures of work with immersive platforms

Immersive platforms have become increasingly embedded in the workplace, leading to questions about their effects on the future of work. For immersive platforms to be successful, they need to be inclusive. The future of work with immersive platforms involves designing for inclusive purposes. This commentary proposes mattering, i.e., the experience of feeling seen, valued and significant to others, as a foundational concept to understand the future of work with immersive platforms. This commentary argues that mattering provides a rich lens to engage critically with immersive platforms and work and to make sense of their strategic implications. While immersive platforms promise co-presence, embodied interactions, and access, they may reproduce precarity, marginalization, and algorithmic forms of exclusion. This commentary questions how immersive platforms challenge and enable mattering at work, discussing how they can affect workers’ recognition, contributions, and sense of dignity in diverse virtual or hybrid organizational settings. The commentary calls for a design and research agenda on immersive platforms that are not only evaluated by pre-existing performance measures but also by their capacity to cultivate mattering. This agenda is important to strategic IS scholars and practitioners committed to shaping inclusive futures of work.