The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed how many Canadians work. According to Statistics Canada, remote work rose to 40 per cent in April 2020 and fell to 18.7 per cent as of May 2024.

While telework allows employees to save time and money on commuting costs and can offer a better work/life balance, academic studies have illustrated how collaborative work can potentially suffer in remote contexts.

Proponents of the metaverse suggest it could be the future of remote work since virtual worlds and virtual reality (VR) afford us the ability to collaborate in virtual spaces. But some companies argue that remote work lacks “water cooler moments” — impromptu encounters between employees that can spark innovation.

The compounding effects of Zoom fatigue and awkward attempts to recreate informal office interactions through virtual events like Zoom parties are partly behind recent interest in the metaverse as the future of remote work.

Metaverse is a term first coined by novelist Neal Stephenson more than three decades ago in his 1992 science-fiction novel Snow Crash.

Today, it’s used to describe “the convergence of physical and virtual space accessed through computers and enabled by immersive technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.” These technologies are collectively referred to as extended reality.

This isn’t the first time companies have explored the use of virtual environments to support remote work. In the early 2000s, companies like IBM and Microsoft had virtual islands in the social virtual world Second Life, where they hosted corporate training and recruitment events. But where Second Life was a platform for desktop computers, the metaverse is primarily one........

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