Companies hiring thousands of employees a year face a serious problem: most of those employees aren't very productive for the first few months after being hired. They spend large amounts of time trying to find their way around the company, working out where the appropriate resources and departments are, and how to use the unique tool set. Accelerate thinks they've found an efficient solution to bringing new employees up to speed quickly using virtual worlds.
John Boring, CEO of Accelerate, sees the virtual world as a more engaging learning tool than a training video. Using a custom-built world resembling, for instance, the company's main campus, employees can explore the company and draw a mental picture of how everything fits together. "It's more compelling and interesting because they're immersed in it," he told me in interview.
His background is strongly rooted in human resources. Originally working with Atari back when they were making Pong, he then spent 8 years at Apple in team development and orientation, eventually moving on to Netscape as HR Director for Engineering. A few years later he got back in touch with his friends from Netscape to see what they were up to, and they told him about Multiverse. Right away he could see some compelling applications.
"Companies are asking: how do we retain our employees and fight turn-over?" When companies make settling in easier, employees are more likely to stay. The New Employee Company Orientation (NECO) program does just that: new employees walk around the virtual world, watch streaming videos describing what happens in that area, and can click on objects to get feeds from the company's intranet or flip through PowerPoint presentations. Not only does this make learning self-paced, but it also facilitates the three learning styles: auditory (learning by hearing), visual (learning by seeing), and kinesthetic (learning by doing). Virtual worlds seem uniquely suited to this kind of application, allowing people to pick whatever learning mode suits them best and to walk through it at their own pace.
This impacts companies in two hard-number areas: retention and productivity. Some clients, like Silicon Image, have tracked improvements in these areas so dramatic that they've asked for the complete product life-cycle to be created in a virtual world to orient new technicians, as well as a section of the world to orient new sales staff on the products that they sell.
Accelerate tries to be platform agnostic when it comes to working out where these things are going to be built. "Many people are focusing on the technology rather than on the problem they are trying to solve," said Boring, and they'd rather work out what needs to be done first and find the solution after. Currently they use Activeworlds for rapid prototyping and quick 3D sketches, and Multiverse for the full roll-out. "Multiverse lets you use the full extent of the programming language," he said, "there's so much you can do." It's out on the edge of technology so the tools to create worlds aren't very mature, but his team of Python, XLM and Java experts are able to create complete worlds from concept to release in as little as six weeks.
Accelerate is releasing their "World In Progress" Multiverse world this week to give people a sense of what can be done in these spaces. While each company wants their unique orientation, 80% is overlap and only 20% is unique to the company. The nature of the Multiverse platform will mean quick adaptation and customization for future clients.
These aren't the only HR-related uses that Boring foresees Accelerate implementing in the future. Interactive games to teach employees how to better relate to their managers (and vice-versa), as well as soft-skill tutorials to homogenize brand behavior worldwide are in the works. The future will focus on "simulation, interaction and collaboration," not only making learning a two-way conversation, but also finding new ways for groups to work together. There may come a day where a company without a virtual world will be seen as a company without a training department.
The long wait is finally over. After years of planning, volumes of hype, and the input of thousands of beta developers, 