In Dublin, Ireland, one of the country’s leading private hospitals was facing a crisis: Amid growing patient demand, increasingly complex clinical issues, aging infrastructure, and space constraints, patient care was starting to suffer. Wait times were too long. Delays and interruptions in care were negatively impacting the patient experience.
To address these challenges, the hospital began by launching an experiment with a single department—radiology—creating a digital twin of the department. In this virtual 3D environment, teams were able to explore different physical layouts and test new operational scenarios, workshopping them with staff and stakeholders.
In short order, the department reduced patient waiting times by up to 25 minutes and turnaround times (the time between a patient’s arrival and departure) by 28 minutes or more. They were able to improve physical accessibility, make better use of equipment, and reduce staffing costs. And all of these improvements—which would normally have taken months, and even years, of trial and error to achieve—were realized in just a matter of weeks.1
This is just one example of how organizations are using a rapidly advancing suite of digital tools and applications to achieve transformational business and customer-facing results. But there’s something important missing in this equation: workforce impact. In their rush to improve the end-customer experience and organizational bottom line, organizations may be overlooking the potential benefits that use of these technologies can bring to the human beings doing the work, and thus missing a critical opportunity to expand their impact.
Technological advancement, most notably the profusion of technologies powered by generative artificial intelligence, is creating the potential for new ways of working that can help elevate human performance (outcomes for both organizations and workers). To deliver on these outcomes, organizations will need digital playgrounds—safe spaces that encourage intentional play and curiosity—to experiment and explore new ways of working.
A digital playground is not a singular place or virtual platform. Rather, it’s a mindset and an approach in which technologies are curated with intention and opportunities to use them are democratized. It’s a safe space for workers to build confidence, learn new skills, and hone their human capabilities.2 Safety in this context refers to psychological safety—where individuals do not risk punishment or humiliation for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and where they are safe to take interpersonal risks.3 It also refers to spaces where workers can experiment with new processes and technologies without putting business outcomes at risk.
A digital playground is not a singular place or virtual platform. Rather, it’s a mindset and an approach in which technologies are curated with intention and opportunities to use them are democratized.
As they play with the possibilities of a new, technologically enabled future on this playground, both workers and organizations can gain experience and achieve enhanced business outcomes (i.e., innovation) faster than real-world conditions might allow.
One example of the broad application of multiple digital playground technologies is the Vancouver Airport Authority launching a virtual, real-time interactive representation of the airport in Vancouver, Canada (YVR), in 2022.4 This platform was expressly created with experimentation in mind—its designers anticipated that YVR’s workers and surrounding community would come up with many more uses for it than they might originally conceive. The platform involves a mix of a virtual space with data collected in real-time from sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) tools throughout the facility. Data is used to inform daily decision-making and collaboration and explore future opportunities for improvement or innovation. Local teams are using the platform to improve outcomes as diverse as managing ground traffic control, improving worker safety and security, reducing carbon emissions from aircraft and other equipment, growing workforce skills, and modeling the expansion of the airport’s indigenous art collection. YVR sees the platform as central to its digital learning hub, an initiative to spur innovation and growth in the surrounding community.
Digital playgrounds can be expansive and include the opportunity to experiment with existing as well as emerging technologies. For example, physically demanding job sites in industries like shipping, construction, and natural resources are already combining technologies such as analytics, sensors, drones, digital models, IoT, edge computing, and extended reality (XR) technology to help workers operate more efficiently. Augmented extended reality (XR) and virtual extended reality (XR) technologies are providing workers with personalized, data-rich environments to engage with new skills and situations safely, or to collaborate better given complex task barriers such as geographic distance or lack of common language. Generative AI sandboxes are providing workers at every level of organizations with a safe space to imagine new combinations of AI and human work.
Amidst the optimism surrounding the possibilities of these rapidly advancing technologies, there is also an undercurrent of anxiety and caution about their use. In November 2023, 28 countries—including 18 of the 20 largest economies in the world—issued a declaration committing themselves to responsible, human-centric use of AI.5 While the declaration highlighted AI’s potential “to transform and enhance human wellbeing, peace, and prosperity,” it also noted the harm that could result from misuse. Leaders are walking this line: According to the World Economic Forum, 75% of organizations globally intend to accelerate their use of AI over the next five years, while also anticipating significant disruption to current worker skills.6 Workers also see both sides: A global survey found that while 39% of workers are worried about the impact of AI on their job, 52% say that increased use of AI is likely to enhance their career possibilities.7
Seventy-five percent of organizations globally intend to accelerate their use of AI over the next five years, while also anticipating significant disruption to current worker skills.
But the opportunities to positively affect human performance are also real. Among the new wave of digital and AI-powered technologies is a growing suite of tools that can enable workers and organizations to set the risks and uncertainties of the real world aside, providing a playground in which to explore, experiment, and cocreate solutions that make work better for humans and humans better at work.™ These tools include AI-powered people analytics; augmented, virtual, and extended reality; digital twins; digital doppelgangers; and more—technologies that not long ago were largely confined to science fiction. Many of these tools are already in use across industries to drive efficiencies, improve processes, train workforces, and explore new ways of working. Moving ahead, organizations will have an increasing array of technologies that could become a part of their digital playground to create improved outcomes for both workers and organizations. Consider the following examples:
One Fortune 500 software firm tested a new generative AI system with its customer service agents, who are required to have both detailed product knowledge and top-notch problem-solving skills to successfully resolve customer issues. The system combined a recent version of a GPT platform with proprietary machine learning algorithms based on data from previous customer service interactions among their 5,000 agents. It provided real-time suggestions for how agents should respond to customers, as well as links to relevant internal documentation to help solve technical issues. The firm realized a 14% increase in the number of chats an agent successfully resolved over the span of an hour—and an even greater increase (35%) for less experienced agents, helping them move more quickly through their learning curve.8
In Singapore, a coalition of digital government agencies launched a joint initiative in partnership with a leading technology company to drive generative AI capabilities in both the public and private sectors. Their approach to increasing generative AI capabilities includes “innovation sandboxes” and workshops to rapidly train people in AI and bring generative AI prototypes to production. The Singapore initiative goes beyond consumer-facing chatbots, seeking to create an AI-first culture that fosters innovation.9
Before construction even began, BMW created a digital twin model of an electric vehicle production plant set to open in Debrecen, Hungary, in 2025.10 Digital twin simulations are allowing workers to train together in a virtual 3D environment, giving them the opportunity to gain familiarity with the new space and practice location-specific skills, with the freedom to experiment, play, and make mistakes. BMW teams can collaborate across multiple locations on any device. The digital twin model also allows engineers to work out bugs and make processes more efficient before the plant opens, saving time and cutting costs. The entire production process will be validated virtually before hardware is installed and robots are programmed to produce specific models.
A British telecommunications company built a digital twin of their call center operations to monitor and visualize its live status and performance. The application allowed the user to experiment in real-time, varying staffing or making operational changes to see the impact on expected performance. A user could test the impact of different decisions related to work shifts, different ways of routing calls, and sudden surges in demand.11
A global technology corporation patented a chatbot that can act and behave like a real person. The doppelganger is created using information that can be gathered from a person’s social media profile, including voice data, posts, messages, behavioral information, and images.12 A team at MIT Media Lab is working on technology to enable machine intelligence to replicate a person’s digital identity so that others can “borrow their identity” to provide consultation or to help with decision-making in the absence of the source human. For example, the technology could be used to create a doppelganger of a corporate lawyer that provides legal expertise to clients at a reduced fee, in essence, “borrowing” the identity of the lawyer.13
HP already used AI in their call centers to route customer calls to the agents best equipped to handle them but has evolved the AI to act as a digital doppelganger, replicating the skills and expertise of high-performing call agents to incorporate into its algorithm.14
Celebrities and in-demand individuals are also experimenting with scaling access to their scarce time and attention. The Swedish band, ABBA, for example, launched a concert series in which the music was performed by their 3D digital avatars created from motion capture.15
The US Air Force is using AR/VR for training and reskilling for both pilots and maintenance crew, improving safety and accelerating curriculum completion by 46%. The AR/VR training program visualizes tools, systems, and aircraft for maintenance training, and the AI capability can provide personalized nudges to the airmen based on their learning style.16
A telecommunications company used AI to analyze the profiles of thousands of workers who identified themselves as machine learning experts to interpret the aggregation of skills, experience, and pathways relating to these workers’ machine learning skill development. The company then created algorithms to search for and hire based on those new metrics—increasing the talent pool by at least three times what the company had estimated.17 After hiring the workers who had these adjacent skills, the company then quickly built on the foundation of these skills to train the hired workers with the specific required machine learning skills. It now has technology that enables workers to compare their skills profile to different types of work and assess their fit, along with a list of skills they need to develop.
The EU is launching a digital simulation of the entire planet called Destination Earth, built from data collected by climate, atmospheric, and meteorological sensors.18 Scientists, policymakers, and business leaders from around the world will have a digital playground where they can access the data to model the socioeconomic impact of climate change. These analytics can help steer policy and business strategies, explore climate trends, test scenarios, and inform possible interventions and investments.
The full potential of these tools for enhancing work and exploring many possible futures is still emerging and can only be fully realized when they are curated and made widely available for the express purposes of experimentation and play.
In a time of disruption and possibility, experimentation and play can help humans learn to explore the unknown and the unexpected, to adapt, and to generate the imagination required to solve the challenges of a boundaryless world.19 To engage with disruption productively, the opportunity to play with the new and the unknown is important. However, enabling it—especially in a business context—requires explicit encouragement, opportunity, and psychological safety. As the pace of disruption accelerates, there will likely be a growing need for more opportunities and spaces to play—spaces that provide access to new technologies and are safe from risk for both the worker and the organization.20
The pace of disruption is creating a world of increasing unpredictability and complexity. New ways of working—emerging seemingly in real time—introduce a host of complex questions. As a result, numerous factors appear to be driving an urgent need for organizations to bring play into focus:
Additionally, some organizations now expect new entrants to come ready to put well-honed skills and human capabilities to use, as the remaining roles now require greater emotional intelligence and divergent thinking.25 This change could have implications for the labor market, particularly among younger generations. Traditionally, entry-level roles allowed new workers the time and space to grow skills. As these roles become scarcer, digital playgrounds could provide spaces to build required experience and practice and develop new skills. For example, digital twins of human bodies and hospital environments can prepare medical professionals before they interact with real-life patients.26 Digital doppelgangers of experienced sales executives can be personal, on-demand coaches for new salespeople. And VR is being used in power utilities to prepare workers to work in dangerous environments like electrical substations.27
In addition, younger workers tend to value hybrid work, distributed teams, and online interactions. Deloitte Global’s millennial and Gen Z study found that about half of all Gen Zs and millennials consider online experiences to be meaningful replacements for in-person experiences.32 For these workers, digital playgrounds will likely seem like a natural extension of the rest of their lives, and they will be ready to embrace their roles as active creators in digital spaces.
According to our research, 76% of workers say it’s very or moderately important that their organization help them imagine how their job may change in the future, but less than half (43%) of workers say their organization is helping them do so. Another recent study of global workers published in September of 2023 found that only 13% of workers had been offered AI-related skills training in the past year, despite a majority of workers believing that those skills would be essential to their future prospects.33 Many organizations are not providing the time, space, opportunity, or tools to either experiment or play.
To help organizations succeed, workers should feel like active participants in the evolution of their roles. Giving them a place to explore and play can be a way to earn their buy-in. Plus, since humans tend to learn best by practicing, digital playgrounds support continuous learning and the development of new skills—particularly when it comes to collaborating with others and honing workers’ ability to work well with technology, a skill that will become more and more necessary in the coming years.34
Organizations that fail to explore with digital playgrounds run the risk of falling into conventional ways of working, which may put them at a disadvantage as technologies continue to advance and change what is possible.
At a moment when worker roles are shifting, it’s important to create safe spaces in which organizations and workers can direct that change toward business outcomes and human sustainability broadly. Importantly, these outcomes will differ from organization to organization and from worker to worker. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Digital playgrounds give workers and organizations the opportunity to model different ways of working and determine the best fits given their specific goals and situations. Organizations that fail to explore with digital playgrounds run the risk of falling into conventional ways of working, which may put them at a disadvantage as technologies continue to advance and change what is possible. Since speed is a major differentiator in today’s world, the faster they start enabling these explorations, the better.
Building and maintaining successful digital playgrounds will likely require organizations to embrace new strategies, mindsets, and approaches to meet evolving workforce needs. But launching a digital playground doesn’t need to be a complicated, resource-intensive endeavor. It just requires you to start where you are with what you have: Many organizations are already using some of the tools one would expect to find in a digital playground. Creating access, psychological safety, and opportunities to play and experiment are the next steps. As organizations begin to build out digital playgrounds, they can consider the following actions:
Digital doppelgangers provide an especially pointed example of the importance of trust when it comes to the role of worker data in digital playgrounds. Since digital doppelgangers are often modeled on actual people, these people will need to provide their ongoing consent to share their knowledge and capabilities in digital form, and potentially own or share intellectual property. Some celebrities are already choosing to sell their likenesses for digital use,36 while others are seeing doppelgangers created without their permission.37 Workers with in-demand expertise, experience, and talents could find similar, lucrative opportunities to have their own doppelgangers created to scale their value in a way that benefits the wider organization. Exercise caution, as this is an emerging field with many questions not yet answered and many more not yet asked.38
Organizations will likely need many digital playgrounds, each involving different sets of tools, leaders, and workers. Each of these playgrounds may have a unique purpose. Some will be specific to certain projects or issues, and these may have a lifespan that ends when the project is over. Others will be more open-ended, with many potential uses.
In the example of the Vancouver International Airport discussed earlier, the platform was explicitly designed as a people-first technology, with operations teams being given free rein to imagine how to apply it. Already, these teams have found multiple uses. It supports worker training and testing of new methods. Data about passenger demand helps staff forecast wait times and identify potential processing issues, allowing workers to provide better service to passengers. Cameras detect if a vehicle has been parked outside the terminal curbside for an extended period, allowing operations and security teams to swiftly address the issue and improve the flow of traffic. Real-time information about maintenance needs enables maintenance staff to respond more efficiently to work orders.39
These are just some examples of the ways in which leaders and workers are using the airport’s digital playground. Its potential uses for experimentation and play in service of better outcomes are practically infinite. It’s a demonstration of how, at their best, digital playgrounds are spaces of limitless possibility. Organizations and workers can both benefit from their capacity to engender new models and find solutions to urgent problems—none more urgent than the role of the worker in an increasingly tech-enabled workplace.
Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey polled 14,000 business and human resources leaders across many industries and sectors in 95 countries. In addition to the broad, global survey that provides the foundational data for the Global Human Capital Trends report, Deloitte supplemented its research this year with worker- and executive-specific surveys to represent the workforce perspective and uncover where there may be gaps between leader perception and worker realities. The executive survey was done in collaboration with Oxford Economics to survey 1,000 global executives and board leaders in order to understand their perspectives on emerging human capital issues. The survey data is complemented by over a dozen interviews with executives from some of today’s leading organizations. These insights helped shape the trends in this report.