The Fast Future Blur

Chapter 6Helping Leaders Design New World People Experiences: Using Virtual and Augmented Reality to Advance the Future of Work

Rajan Kalia and Cortney Harding

‘As a coinage, hybrid work is no beauty. But it will reshape cities, careers, family life and free time. That is ample qualification for a word of the year.’¹ It was The Economist's choice of the word for the year, 2022.

At some point in the relatively near future, a white-collar worker's typical day might look something like this. You wake up in the morning in a rental whose location was determined not by the location of a physical office but by the time zone most of your colleagues work in. Your manager is based in Cape Town and your peer is in Copenhagen, while you're temporarily in Rome, burnishing your Italian skills and trying to keep the pasta pounds at bay.

You slip on a virtual reality headset and log in for your first meeting of the day – no need to bother with hair and makeup, so you stay in sweats while your avatar sports the latest Prada blouse. Your colleagues, all equally clad in athleisure in real life, appear perfectly turned out as you have your daily stand-up and share the latest 3D model of a product you're all working on. From there, you're in the virtual office, heading to meetings and turning your availability light from red to green as you have time to catch up. A new intern sees your green light and their avatar zooms over; you decide to grab a virtual coffee and answer questions about your career ...