Fostering Inclusion and Prioritising Well-Being at Player Research – Part I

Working in an inclusive environment means feeling like the people around you care about your feelings and opinions, care about your well-being, respect your boundaries, and value you holistically (not just the parts of you that benefit them).

At Player Research, everyone is valued and celebrated for who they are, not despite our differences but because of them.

We recognise that everybody has their own unique mix of strengths to bring to the table, and that we all have a variety of different lived experiences, perspectives, and journeys — into this company, and into this industry.

Maintaining an inclusive workplace isn’t a simple goal and the work is never truly ‘done’; it is an ongoing commitment that requires effort, responsibility, and involvement from everyone who works here, regardless of role, seniority or tenure.

I’m proud of the positive working culture that we have established and sustained over many years at Player Research, and I’m happy to share some of the actionable parts of our process with you all in this two-part article.

I’ve written this article with two goals in mind:

• It’s important for any future applicants to get a feel for what working at Player Research is like; although we know we benefit from a positive working culture, it’s no good for drawing wonderful people to us if they aren’t aware of it from the outside!
• I’d also like to hope that people from other companies can take some inspiration from our approach, or kick-start a discussion about what they do to foster a more inclusive environment.

In this Part I article, the following principles will be covered:

• Encourage Open and Honest Communication
• Create Safe Spaces for Discussion
• Be Mindful of Language
• Celebrate Individual Successes

Encourage Open and Honest Communication

Player Research fosters a healthy communication environment that encourages every person, at every level, to express how they feel about things in a respectful manner.

• We actively host group discussions to share thoughts and feedback on work processes and decisions, recognising that diversity in thought can help us reach outcomes we can’t always see ourselves.
• We hold each other accountable when we make mistakes or display unconscious biases.
• We create a workspace where people feel comfortable sharing their personal concerns with the knowledge they will receive support from everyone.

A high level of psychological safety in a team is integral in enabling people to be themselves, to be open, and to enable individual and achieve collective growth. As a group we appreciate and strive for a culture of honest, respectful feedback.

It is also important that we acknowledge and embrace the awkwardness and discomfort that can sometimes accompany difficult conversations; it’s not always possible to move forward without a little bit of discomfort, so we try not to fear it when that happens.

 

Create Safe Spaces for Discussion

It’s important to be intentional in the creation of spaces that can facilitate open discussion without fear of judgment, especially now a lot of our work is done remotely.

We created an Equity channel in our company slack, and encourage staff to share and discuss resources. It was a productive step to be more deliberate with where these types of conversations were taking place, as before it was largely occurring in the default ‘off topic’  channel. This didn’t feel right to me as important topics and issues could feel trivialised, or easily lost amongst random discussions. Now we have a dedicated location people can go to highlight, learn about, and discuss social justice issues.

As a less-serious but equally important example, in 2019 I started up a channel called ‘getting-to-know-each-other’. Once a week this dedicated channel is used for learning about who we each are as people, with non-work related questions that can be as trivial as “What’s your favourite food?” or something deeper like “What’s a tradition from your childhood that you really loved?”.

It’s been good to carve out time in the week unrelated to work, instead purely about connecting as people sharing our interests and backgrounds.

Here are a few of the guidelines I developed for running the channel in an inclusive way:

• Try to keep the question topics as broad, varied, and inclusive as possible. For example, don’t ask sports-related questions 3 times in a month since that would exclude colleagues who have no interest in sport.
• Invite colleagues to send in questions to add to the list so that everyone has an opportunity to come up with discussion topics that are meaningful or interesting to them.
• Make clear that no one is ever obliged or expected to answer any question each week. That way there’s no pressure on colleagues who would rather sit a question out for any particular reason.

Over the years I’ve found it heartening to see colleagues feel safe and comfortable to share some very moving and personal stories, memories and ambitions arising from these questions. They facilitate respectful discussions on a wide range of topics, and of course, sometimes it is just a nice excuse to chat about our favorite games or share pet pictures!

We’ve found making time for casual chatting to be really successful, and it creates good opportunities for people to open up about their culture, personalities, and life experiences in conversations that otherwise might not happen. This is even more valuable for companies such as ours where we have offices across different countries, and do a large amount of remote work.

So far, a lot of the references here have been about our online communication tools, and this has been a big focus for us since moving to a hybrid working model. However, it’s vital that the same care and respect afforded in online spaces is present in real life too.

For us at Player Research, this takes the shape of:

• Encouraging cross-desk chit chat about everyday things
• Warmly welcoming employee’s children, partners, and pets into the office space and to after-work social events
• Valuing screen-breaks to grab tea or snacks and have a catch-up
• Providing rooms and seating areas of various types and sizes in the office, where smaller groups or pairs can break away for quieter discussions when desired

 

Be Mindful of Language

This is an ongoing and broad principle to keep in mind, but comes down to making continued, thoughtful efforts to evaluate how language is used and the effects it can have within your company.

Here’s a few examples of how we’re mindful about our words at Player Research.

When I started working at Player Research there were no formal procedures in place for pronoun usage when referring to our playtesters. I raised this point, and suggested we ask players for their pronouns on our playtest sign-up forms so that we can be sure we are not unintentionally misgendering anyone who comes to playtest for us.

The feedback was taken on board swiftly and we edited the sign-up form almost immediately, (which also helped me feel confident that my opinion was respected despite the fact I’d only recently joined the company). We continue to get supportive feedback about our ability for playtesters to self-identify.

In our written research reports, we always use gender-neutral language when discussing something a specific player experienced; this helps to reduce the impact of any potential gender bias that risks creeping into the interpretation of results.

More broadly, we facilitate a culture of psychological safety at Player Research, wherein people are encouraged to reflect and challenge their views, and one-off mistakes (ones that do not cause harm) are an opportunity to learn from rather than be harshly punished.

Harsh punishments for minor slip-ups in language can be a barrier to people challenging their biases because it creates an atmosphere of fear which can inhibit positive change. Instead, it’s important to be discerning of genuine mistakes versus continued ignorance or harmful speech. As such, we all meet each other with support and kindness when we call people out for occasional  mis-steps.

 

Celebrate Individual Successes

A culture of 360 degree feedback is important at Player Research to help our continued growth and development. Our company includes

dedicated ‘People Managers’ to develop professional and managerial skills, and ensure feedback happens. Nicki, our Brighton-based People Manager, identified that we could be doing a better job of regularly, and intentionally, providing each other with positive feedback.

She created a new Slack channel that’s specifically for giving this kind of public feedback and celebrating people across the team who are doing well: team-player-roundup.

This is great for giving a chance to shine the spotlight on someone whose positive contributions may otherwise go unnoticed or unappreciated by the wider team. A format like this can especially benefit introverted members of the team who are less likely to shout about or share their own achievements.

This type of feedback channel is so important for boosting colleague morale on a frequent basis, and ensures that all individuals across the team can receive the praise they deserve in a timely fashion.

It also serves as a good chance for us all to be more appreciative of each other, and get in the habit of recognising the diversity of strengths people exhibit across the team.

 

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Keep your eyes peeled for part 2 of this article which will cover the principles of Valuing Staff Time and Personal Needs, No Crunch, Investing in Well-being and Mental Health Support, and Championing Flexible Working.

I’d also love for anyone to leave a comment on Twitter or Medium to discuss anything you want to hear more about, or drop your own advice about inclusive work practices that work for you!

 

Illustrations by Lucy Sherston

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