Manage the Risks When Employees Join Virtual Communities

Claus Nehmzow, a member of PA Consulting Group's management team, was testing the voice functions in the online community Second Life when he read an interesting response from a virtual employee.

Nehmzow typed a message to one of the virtual greeters his firm hired to interact with visitors to PA Consulting's Second Life offices, asking her if she could hear his voice. "She typed back, 'Sorry, I cannot because I am deaf','" recalls Nehmzow, who leads the organization's applications of virtual worlds. "I didn't know she was deaf until that point, and it didn't matter."

The exchange explains why Nehmzow describes virtual worlds such as Second Life as "the ultimate nondiscriminatory medium." Like a growing number of firms, PA Consulting taps the medium to recruit real-life employees, foster collaboration among a geographically dispersed workforce, collaborate with customers and hire "in-world" Second Life employees, who are paid in the realm's currency of Lindens, currently trading at an exchange rate of 270 Lindens to one U.S. dollar.

Although Nehmzow has not encountered any HR-related problems with his virtual team of Second Life greeters, he is now researching the firm's responsibilities should a greeter experience real problems on the virtual job.

As he should, says labor and employment law attorney and HR consultant Dave Elchoness. "An employment relationship with a greeter in Second Life is almost more complicated than the relationship with a regular employee who might go online any time someone enters the company's virtual offices," says Elchoness. "You may be hiring someone ... you don't know anything about."

Hardly a Luddite, Elchoness operates a virtual law office in Second Life and says that virtual worlds eventually "will be used as a communications medium that is the next best thing to visiting in person."

But he insists that HR managers should not let their companies enter virtual realms blind to potentially serious risks.

"On one hand, this medium opens a huge number of opportunities," Elchoness says. "On the other hand, unless you go into it with your eyes wide open, you can run into some unsavory characters and situations."

Endless Opportunities

IBM refers to Second Life and its ilk as "virtual social worlds." PA Consulting uses the broader term "participatory media," while others prefer "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," "multiplayer online games," or the "3-D Internet." The variance reflects the fact that the maturation of virtual worlds is just a few seconds into what will be a long journey, according to IBM.