We’re building an open collaborative resource for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) Leaders that will disrupt the way we approach training teams and take positive action for purposeful change in the workplace.
Are you a DEI Leader who is curious about exploring tackling deeper DEI issues and pain points and want to play a crucial role in shaping an open resource? Want to explore how creativity, role play, technology and innovation that can meet your ever evolving needs?
You need a strategy that’s altogether different and sticks like Velcro.
We know workplace conversations are not easy, we understand it can be a challenge to tackle deeper issues you encounter that can hinder your progress formulating and delivering DEI initiatives. You may find it a challenge to get the right support, facilitators or resources that you need to help you design and execute your strategy within your team.
Most Inclusion training rely on passive learning, teams sitting through hours of lectures, clicking through slides often fails to engage. Your team maybe uncomfortable with the subject, indifferent, overstretched or simply burnt out.
Employees often struggle to connect with others due to the nature of their work, or apply concepts and techniques learnt in their day-to-day tasks.
Conventional training fails to truly capture the lived experiences of marginalised individuals. Your team maybe struggling to care about the wellbeing of others in their team, or have compassion fatigue.
Standard teambuilding initiatives like Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility training are met with disinterest. Your team may not care enough about their work culture.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of PlayNicely™, an open collaborative project that builds the elements you need to help you structure, strengthen and make your DEI initiatives stick. We help you prepare for the unexpected, so you are not on your own building solutions from scratch.
Do you want to bring a competitive edge to your training offer? This project provides a sandbox of resources for DEI leaders, developed and honed by you with the best DEI experts and professionals to support you on your journey. The framework is a disarmingly playful approach to DEI training, using creative workshops like role play, extended reality (VR/AR) gamified learning modules to increase effectiveness, boost higher retention rates, promote higher engagement and deeper personal enquiry.
PlayNicely™, in the later stages of the project offers VR and AR applications with built-in analytics that will allow DEI leaders to track engagement and effectiveness of their strategies, ensuring measurable results and lasting impact.
Our team of experts accelerate adoption with bespoke consultation and mentorship
Playful and curious, our creative multi disciplinary sessions are hybrid and respond to real life scenarios
Virtual 'safe space' using AR/VR gamified practice zones for deeper emotional & psychological engagement
Trackable, measurable results and data to drive team insights & increased progress
Knowledge without action is futile, which sets PlayNicely™ apart from other DEI solutions. It empowers leaders to drive change by ditching the traditional ‘one size fits all’ program. PlayNicely™ is designed to collectively support the actions needed for DEI Leaders and organisations with an ever evolving toolkit, taking the legwork out of delivering your initiatives on your own. As cutting edge solutions are found during our Research and Development (R&D) stage, resources will constantly improve and grow, so you get to tackle pain points with confidence.
Gain valuable insights into leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives through hands-on mentorship. You’ll have an pool of experts and delivery partners and cutting edge creative technologists on tap. So you can quickly and confidently offer a flow of solutions that transform existing passive environments and learning tools into action.
Engage with a community of experienced mentors, HR professionals as well as Creative professionals and Psychotherapists who have successfully implemented inclusive team-building strategies. Share best practices, collaborate on challenges, and gain new perspectives that will elevate your DEI efforts across the organization.
Receive personalized mentorship and resources that address your organization’s specific DEI challenges. Play a crucial role in shaping product decisions during R&D phase. From designing creative team-building activities to leveraging technology like Team building, AR/VR, Role play, that drives real cultural change and employee engagement.
With ongoing support, guidance, and access to innovative tools, you’ll be able to track the tangible benefits of your DEI initiatives. Build a more inclusive, cohesive workplace where employees feel valued and empowered, leading to increased productivity, retention and overall organizational success.
There’s increasing research and studies to support the effectiveness of adopting the PlayNicely program. According to the Journal of Applied Psychology, 60% of employees apply their new knowledge after a creativity based role playing activity.
People who are taught using virtual reality tech are 3.75 times more emotionally connected to the content, 4 times more focused than traditional learning platforms, and were more confident about applying the skills they learn after training.
of employees reported increased empathy toward underrepresented groups after Immersive Training
Stanford University
of teams reported improvement of knowledge retention using Immersive Training
PwC
of employees apply their new knowledge after creativity-based role-playing activities
Journal of Applied Psychology
PlayNicely™ is designed to make it easier for DEI leaders to improve workplace culture, it aims to addresses the lack of resources available to DEI Leaders and opens up space for deeper enquiry, accelerate learning, develop team insights and promote sustained longer term engagement that improve Inclusion delivery and outcomes in the workplace. Furthermore, PlayNicely aims to deliver critical insights for policy development, mentoring programs and diversity audits tailored to develop empathy, cultural competency and belonging.
Unlike traditional DEI training, our approach is highly interactive and engaging. We use cutting-edge technologies like AR/VR for immersive learning, role play and gamification to make the training memorable. Our focus is on practical, real-world scenarios that help participants internalise and apply Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility concepts to their day-to-day work. This ensures that the training has a lasting impact on workplace culture.
The program includes hands-on activities, creative problem-solving exercises, and workshops aimed at improving team collaboration and focuses on key pain points and deeper challenges such as unconscious bias, inclusive leadership and cross-cultural communication making training more active and immersive.
Creative workshops and training programs are focused on increasing cultural awareness and competency in the workplace. Employees and teams are encouraged to undertake self enquiry and be curious to learn and respect other people, their diverse cultural norms, values, and communication styles by deconstructing and closely addressing issues like:
1. Unconscious bias and blind spots
2. Fear of change
3. Perceived threat to meritocracy
4. Lack of Awareness
5. Fear of loss of power & status – decolonising mindset
6. Diversity Fatigue – Frustration and emotional exhaustion
7. Perceived Ineffectiveness and Tokenism
8. Fear of being perceived as discriminatory or offensive
Through a myriad of techniques including storytelling, role play, creative expression and movement, PlayNicely™ improves cross-cultural understanding and global team collaboration, leading to better teamwork, more effective client relations and fewer cultural misunderstandings.
Immersive Learning is the development of a digital platform that offers interactive, on-demand inclusion training modules, VR/AR scenarios, gamified learning experiences and employee progress tracking. The platform supports continuous learning with new content and updates to reflect growth and development.
PlayNicely™ offers flexible, scalable learning that fits different schedules and allows employees to learn at their own pace, ensuring that inclusion, equity, diversity and accessibility education is an ongoing, dynamic process.
Virtual Reality (VR) is a fully immersive technology that simulates a real or imagined environment, allowing users to interact with it through a headset and Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital elements (like images or text) onto the real-world environment through your smartphone or AR glasses.
These experiences can offer your team gamified incentives to engage in real-life inclusion scenarios, such as navigating work space bias, experiencing micro-aggressions, or managing diverse teams. These scenarios foster empathy and teach practical solutions to inclusion challenges.
Leaders can gain insights and gain data driven metrics and analytics to bring data to life. As participants learn through new experiences, curiosity and adoption, it can help to cultivate empathy and better understand diverse perspectives, their progress is trackable and can lead to more insights and change.
Yes! PlayNicely™ can easily be integrated into your current DEI programs. We co-create with you and customise the learning paths and challenges to align with your organisation’s specific goals. We can build upon your existing initiatives, making it an enhancement to your strategy rather than a replacement.
The PlayNicely™ program is designed to be flexible and accessible. For the technology, gamified aspects of delivery, teams can access the platform through desktops or smartphone devices. If using VR simulations, teams can use their smartphone as a VR headset. We can help recommend or source anything from DIY cardboard devices to competitively priced models to lease or buy. The program can be deployed remotely, in-office, or hybrid environments to provide maximum accessibility to different working practices.
We use a combination of metrics to track the effectiveness of the program. We include pre- and post-training surveys, employee engagement data, feedback sessions and diversity audits.
In the open collaborative stage, we aim to develop and design the gamified application which will also provide real-time progress tracking, enabling us to monitor how well teams are engaging with the training content and apply what they have learned from the other immersive active learning sessions and workshops.
We are a global network of changemakers – creatives, technologists and social activists who have a passion for storytelling, committed to regenerative innovation and promote successful change initiatives for social good. PlayNicely™ reflects our mission to fight for cultural competence as a key requirement for the future. We foster collaborations that amplify impact, transform people and places with creativity and emerging technology, in the quest to address disparities in all spheres of life. We’ve collaborated with partners from around the world for this cause, including UK Research Institute, Queen Mary College, University of London and University of Bristol.
Find out more, get the FREE PlayNicely Playbook when you signup!
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