How do you create a more diverse work environment and how do you ensure your company offers inclusion for all employees ? Diversity needs inclusion so that working together becomes both fun and efficient.

Concept of the game

In this board game, two teams make their way through a labyrinth of complex, confrontational and sometimes funny questions.
During the game, we present the participants with concrete situations about diversity concerning, gender, culture, age or disability.

Each team needs to make choices and each situation reflects the professional reality of the participants. Together with the customer, we select the most relevant questions ahead of time so that each topic is truly relevant for the players.

There are no good or wrong answers. The point is to stimulate enriching debates about Diversity and Inclusion. These debates enable participants to open up about ‘difficult topics’ . As they are in a game-setting, they feel safe to share their personal point of view.

We ensure that the dialogue remains respectful and constructive. We also add the ‘lighter’ questions to keep the game dynamic and fun.

What do you learn?

• Participants encounter their own unconscious bias : the game makes the concept concrete for them. Why do they make certain choices ? How do they feel about the answers/solutions other participants come up with ?
• The discussions lead to new insights, increased mutual understanding and shared views.

During the debrief, we link the experience of the game to what participants experience in their day to day work environment. Together, we look into the lessons learned and which agreements can be made to work together in a more efficient way.

We also make a link with the underlying principles of Diversity and Inclusion, while avoiding a long theoretical lecture.

The strength of the game is its ability to create greater awareness around Diversity and Inclusion. Very often, employees aren’t even aware that there is a need to work on Diversity and Inclusion. This game stimulates the players to think about the topic while they are confronted with their own prejudices or unconscious bias. The game can be played as such or be part of a wider program about Diversity and Inclusion.

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Teams working in silos : a common challenge in many companies. This game has been developed to stimulate positive interaction and exchange between multiple teams. Create a team spirit that goes beyond the boundaries of one specific group of people Experience how you can make multiple teams, each with their own target, work towards the larger common goal.

“Break the silos” works as well in any organisation, including a production environment. It can take into account a ‘shift’ set-up or the back-office/front-office challenge.

By linking the game to the reality of your company, the game experience is more than fun: it becomes a practical means to break down silos.

Your key take aways :

Participants experience that looking beyond the walls of their own team and by really working together with other teams, everyone benefits from the best end-result.

Program :

Through a creative game workshop, you experience the importance of inter-team collaboration.
What works and what doesn’t work ? By linking the game experience to your in-company experience, the game turns into a practical approach towards mind-set and behavioural change.

Set up :

• Two or more teams need to accomplish a creative task together. Each team focuses on one specific ‘sub-goal’.
• However, all goals need to be achieved in order to accomplish the end-task.
• You can only “win” if all teams manage to finish their sub-goal : either everyone wins, or nobody wins.
• This game can be played on a ‘stand alone’ basis, for instance to enhance collaboration between 2 teams or can be used in a larger context/change program.

Course of the game

There are three rounds in this half-day game.

Round 1 :

• • • Every team member gets a number of individual goals.
    • One goal is the same for every team member but there are also a number of additional goals that are different for each team member.
    • The instructions and the goals are constructed in such a way that team members need to help each other even if it means that the individual results might suffer.

Round 2 :

• • • • • Same instructions but additional difficulties are added (for instance: one team member ‘disappears’ or needs to help out in another team.

Discussion :

• • • • • What happened and what do we recognise in our every-day working environment.
        • We make the parallel with the daily reality of the participants. How can we improve results through improved team work?

Round 3 :

• The various team members and various teams need to work together in the best way possible.
• The tasks stays the same, but participants experience how working together with the other teams, improves everyone’s chances to win.
• At the end of round 3 everyone wins!

Extra:

While the teams are playing, we film what is happening. This material can be used in a wider context (e.g. internal communication)
The teams ‘exhibit’ what they have created in a place with high visibility (e.g. company restaurant or coffee corner). This enhances the chances that the game (and the learning) becomes and remains a topic of conversation.