Equality, Diversity and a Culture of Inclusion Training Solution

Looking for impactful diversity, equality, inclusion training? Delivered as a full (or optionally half-day) workshop, with or without professional actors, this diversity equality training programme goes beyond the basics, creating space for open conversations, reflection and real learning.

Through experiential activities, real-world scenarios and plenty of opportunity for brave discussion, participants explore key topics, covering all the essentials and more. With unconscious bias, belonging, psychological safety, workplace banter, micro-behaviours and courageous conversations all on the agenda, this programme promises not just knowledge, but the tools and confidence to create a truly inclusive culture.

Ready to start the conversation?

Learning outcomes:

Understand unconscious bias, assumptions, and stereotypes, and how to guard against them.
Have explored relevant equality law and how to go beyond mere legal compliance.
Understand the lines between discrimination, harassment, bullying, and banter, developing the awareness to separate intent and impact.

Recognise the impact of micro-behaviours on colleagues and workplace culture.
Learn practical strategies to have courageous conversations and shift from being passive bystanders to active allies.
Have personalised action plans with steps to promote conscious inclusion in daily interactions and professional roles.

Workshop Outline...

Inclusive Foundations: The session begins with a thought-provoking video, setting the stage for a deep dive into what we mean by inclusivity at work. Participants will be invited to share personal experiences and insights, building a collective understanding of diverse perspectives.

The Law and the Journey Beyond: A rundown of relevant equality law, e.g., Equality Act 2010 and Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 in the UK, equips participants with knowledge of their legal responsibilities. Participants will consider the spectrum of individual experiences and barriers that contribute to inclusivity challenges, encouraging them to think beyond simple legal compliance. They’ll identify their first actionable objective, which will be included in their personalised action plan.

Unconscious Bias and The Assumption Trap: Next, we explore the psychological underpinnings of stereotypes and assumptions using the “Picture This” activity. The “Candle and Matches” exercise contrasts impulsive and reflective decision-making, revealing how biases like affinity and confirmation, can subtly influence everyday workplace interactions.

How this looks with actors:
Participants will be immersed in a true-to-life scenario hand-selected or custom-written to reflect your organisation’s sector and culture. Two professional actors will enact the scenario, shining a light on bias. Through interaction with the characters, participants will explore how to dismantle inclusion barriers. They’ll see assumptions play out and, putting their critical thinking skills into practice, they’ll use questioning to uncover the perspectives of both players in the conversation.

Micro-behaviours, Intent, and Impact: Participants will explore the gap between intent and impact, and how banter can go too far, crossing personal and professional boundaries. A quiz engages participants in identifying the “Fine Lines” between discrimination, harassment, bullying, and banter. And we’ll examine micro-behaviours, the subtle ways bias influences our interactions.

How this looks with actors:
An experiential scenario empowers participants to navigate the complexities of real-life situations, where seemingly harmless behaviour evolves into exclusionary behaviour. As the scenario unfolds, participants will need to put their knowledge into practice to address the issue.

Banter, Bystanders and Courageous Conversations: We’ll discuss bystanders’ influence on workplace culture. Participants will learn strategies to move from passive observers to active interveners, equipped with the “Wait a SEC” tool to speak out constructively. Participants are invited to reflect on their second actionable objective.

How this looks with actors:
Participants will witness a scene where the conversation, light at first, quickly becomes uncomfortable as comments cross professional boundaries. We’ll uncover the impact of the comments, and unpack the difference between intent and impact. Participants can then put the Wait a SEC framework into practice, collaboratively working on intervention strategies.

Personal Reflection and Conscious Inclusion: The “Inner Circle of Trust” activity highlights how lived experiences shape our worldview and the steps we can take to broaden our personal perspectives. This introspection paves the way for a session on conscious inclusion, where participants articulate what an actively inclusive environment looks like, and actionable behaviours that can be adopted to promote such an environment in the context of their own workplace.

Action Planning for Inclusion: The workshop concludes with a dedicated section for action planning, where participants will draft personalised strategies to implement the principles of EDI and Conscious Inclusion in their daily professional conduct. Action plans will be collected and can optionally be shared back with project sponsors to progress internally.

Let's Talk!

We’re advocates of crafting tailormade solutions that ensure you meet objectives and maximise budgets. Contact us to book a meeting to scope the right solution for your organisation, together.

What About Actors?

Through clever script writing, goose-bump inducing delivery and professional facilitation we can bring so much to life. We stimulate emotion, penetrate the long-term memory and create lasting change.

When we use live drama, we are able to have the actors play out the scenario and then be hot seated for the audience to ask them questions whilst they remain in character. Hot seating works so well because actors work with a pre-rehearsed backstory, so they are able to respond in character. They progressively reveal unexpected elements of their story that will not have previously been told. It can bust assumptions that the audience might have made based on the scenario (situation) but not fully understanding the impact at first sight.

Using actors in this programme enables us to bring to:

Bring both the subtle, and not so subtle, inappropriate behaviours to life, literally
Provide attendees with an opportunity to explore the fine line between what is and isn’t acceptable
Give attendees a chance to challenge the actors whilst they are still in character
Demonstrate that things aren’t always what they seem at first glance
Provide delegates with an opportunity to test out alternative ways of approaching what can often be sensitive situations
Create a goosebump-inducing learning experience that sticks in the long-term memory

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Don't Just Take Our Word For It

Nina Darling

UoP SHCP Teaching Fellow, University of Portsmouth

“The course which Paula provided was really engaging and nicely presented. The use of the actors was particularly good and actually bought the whole thing to life and made it really valuable learning. Thank you very much – it was fantastic!”

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Equality, Diversity & A Culture of Inclusion

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