Creating The Future With _VOIS’ In-House Disruptor, The EDGE

I have always been passionate about achieving my goals while doing what I love and loving what I do. Innovation goes hand in hand with my entrepreneurial spirit, so working with cutting-edge tech at VOIS is perfect for me. My team, The EDGE, is focused on disruptive innovation in future-looking technologies, which has led to various exciting initiatives based on AI, Metaverse, and Brain Computing already.

Some insight into Brain Computing

Brain Computing (BCI) is an evolving technology. It enables deeper understanding of the human brain, which holds potential to empower and uplift the world we live in. The EDGE is exploring how it can push the boundaries of human potential and transform how we leverage our interaction with machines. 

One area we’ve pursued is deploying BCI technology for employee skills identification. Our hypothesis was that this technology has potential to help us understand an employee’s brain pattern and cognitive skills, and therefore place them in the best role for them. Our goal is to go beyond the traditional upskilling/reskilling approaches, to a more comprehensive and scientific skills-based model. This shift will allow organisations to adopt a mindset of lifelong learning, democratise work opportunities, and enable employees from diverse backgrounds and generations to thrive. 

Together with the VOIS Top Talent Program, The EDGE designed and executed a POC on Employee Skills Identification using BCI, in collaboration with IIT Delhi, India. It was the first ever cross-industry use case on employee skills role mapping. We tested a set of 54 people from the technology testing team in Pune, India, using their existing KPIs to separate them into ‘top’ and ‘low’ performers - the aim was to identify the difference in their cognitive skills using BCI. Why? We wanted to confirm our belief that top performers display more of certain skills than others.

What we found was that the results illustrated a clear visual and statistical difference between employee brain responses for different skills assessed. From this, we were able to conclude that by using BCI, employee brain performance for cognitive skills can be measured and assessed, and that when defining role requirements, a cognitive skills baseline can be created using each employee’s brain data. 

Ultimately, the aim is to use what we can learn from these tests to increase productivity and efficiency and look for certain identified skills when hiring new talent. The next phase is going to be replicating the experiment in other parts of the organisation.

And here’s what we’re doing with WebAR technology

WebAR is another exciting one. We have been leveraging this technology to create a more immersive and engaging PRIDE Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) experience for VOIS employees globally, in line with Vodafone’s goal of increasing awareness and engagement with its D&I agenda. The traditional methods Vodafone used before weren’t getting enough engagement, so this year we built a unique virtual platform that our colleagues loved!

Utilising WebAR, we created an interactive experience that broke the barriers of physical location. It was very easy for employees to participate with a quick QR scan and no login needed. Because it was so simple to access and much more engaging, it was very effective at capturing people’s attention. It made it easier for everyone to explore, learn, and connect with the PRIDE community.

When we saw the data, we realised it had been transformative.

VOIS achieved a 15X peak in employee engagement versus last year’s metaverse 2D immersive office celebrations for PRIDE – and the experience rating was 4.75/5.

What’s next?

We see a huge potential in AI-based solutions at VOIS. We’ve already proven how much of an impact they can make, and the technologies are only going to get better. As an evolving organisation undergoing some major structural and organisational changes to respond well to competitive and market demands, VOIS is an exciting place to be in terms of the growth potential it holds for disrupting.

For me, the most interesting part has been conceptualising, implementing and delivering things that are new and disruptive and never existed before. Making the learning experience even greater still has been having to undertake diverse stakeholder conversations and negotiations in order to deliver at a fraction of industry cost.

So what can we do next? How can we do it? We’re already working on more groundbreaking products that can deliver exponential gains to our business within a significantly quick timeline, but what other new technologies are going to start emerging? What will we be exploring in 2025?

VOIS is always embracing the latest tech, and what that means for the company’s future and our projects at The EDGE is something we can’t wait to find out!