--- title: "Psychosocial hazards training for managers" description: "Leadership, inclusion and the conversation that decides whether a hazard gets reported. Built for enterprise teams with Google, Etihad and Metro Trains." canonical: https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries/workplace-enterprise --- [Our Work](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work) / [Industries](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries) # Workplace and enterprise, our largest body of work Leadership, inclusion and change programs built with global technology, [transport](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries/transport-logistics), aviation and telecommunications organisations, so leaders practise the conversation before they have it. The moment ## A probation review at nine, rehearsed at an empty desk the night before A team leader at a telco has a probation conversation in the morning with someone she likes. She has read the policy twice and still does not know how to open. If it goes badly he leaves in the spring, HR asks what she said, and the rest of the team hears their own version of it. Your managers push back on a deadline to a senior stakeholder, with room to try it twice. Your people say the concern out loud in the practice run, so the real conversation is not the sole time they have said it. Your frontline staff take the fourth call about the same fault without losing the customer. What Google measured ## The cohort that rated it above their standard training At Google, a VR DEI training co-designed by PTR co-founder Leonie Sanderson and 13 Google DEI volunteers ran four scenarios, each experienced from two perspectives. The work appeared in a peer-reviewed paper at CHI 2024, co-authored by Google researchers and Sanderson. The opening cohort of Google security team staff reported 94% satisfaction, and all but one rated it better than Google’s standard DEI training. [Read the Google case study. Your executives sit across the boardroom table from the bias they are asked to notice.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/google-vr-dei-training) Your hybrid teams rehearse the meeting where the person on the screen gets talked over. Your managers practise the conversation about what comes next before a promotion round. Working in a broader workplace or enterprise setting? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries/workplace-enterprise#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question Work in this sector ## Metro Trains, Etihad Airways and Optus With Grit Leadership, PTR delivered VR training using the Everyday Inclusion module to Metro Trains head office and operational leaders; it surfaced systemic bias in recruiting and keeping women in roles such as train maintenance. With Utano Global, PTR ran a two-day VR training pilot for 36 Etihad Airways cabin crew. For Optus, PTR built an experience that supports a culture of belonging. [Read the Metro Trains case study. Your leaders reconsider facility design and resourcing after standing in the scenario.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/metro-trains-gender-equity) [Read the Etihad case study. Your crew rehearse cultural misunderstandings and hierarchy-driven breakdowns before the flight.](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/etihad-cabin-crew-inclusion) Your people step into the shoes of both employee and manager and see the impact of bias as it happens. What clients say ## In their words Three clients on what changed in the room. > " I don't think role plays will ever cut it again in this space. Participants are able to empathise and discuss the experiences... with detail that just wouldn't be possible without actually experiencing it themselves. " Nic Barry, Digital Learning & Organisational Capability, Domain Group > " They jump back, step away, they gasp, they try to find their voice. " Rhonda Brighton-Hall, CEO, MWAH - Making Work Human Again > " Their approach was structured and transparent and they always let us know what was achievable given the timeframe and budget. " Sally Wagnon, Senior Campaign Manager, 89 Degrees East Why VR ## Why VR, and what the studies measured Classroom-style diversity training has a credibility problem: [Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev](https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2018.1493182) found mandatory diversity training frequently produces no improvement, and sometimes a decline, in workplace diversity outcomes. That is why PTR builds experiential, embodied training. The [Google case study](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/case-studies/google-vr-dei-training) reports satisfaction and a same-day comparison with Google’s standard training; wider VR research finds some bias reductions fade within days. Your managers practise the adjustment conversation an employee has been putting off asking for. Online: no effect Online perspective-taking did not shift gender bias in a simulated hiring exercise. [PLOS ONE, 2022](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269430) VR: significant change The same study found embodied VR perspective-taking produced a significant change in participants' hiring choices. [PLOS ONE, 2022](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269430) > "In a world where much of our learning has moved online, the human element is often lost. VR can help bridge this gap, allowing people to practice real-world interactions in a controlled, immersive environment." Simon Lowe CEO, People Tech Revolution. [The Cusp of a Revolution, Global Best Practice Group, October 2024](https://globalbestpracticegroup.com/airevolution/) The library ## Practice scenarios from the library The feedback conversation, the upset customer, the concern raised for the practice run, the deadline that does not fit, being talked over, the exit interview and the return to an open-plan office. Each runs in a headset, or as a written or spoken practice partner at the desk. Your returning employee rehearses the walk back into an open-plan office before the day itself. Your floor staff hear the complaint in the aisle, with the shelf still between them and the customer. Your HR team sits through the exit interview that tells them what the engagement survey did not. - [More scenarios in the PTR VR Library](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/ptr-vr-library) - [AI practice partners](https://peopletechrevolution.com/ai/ai-roleplay-practice) - [Difficult conversations training](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/difficult-conversations-training) The regulation ## The hazard that lives in a conversation In Queensland, where PTR is based, a business has a duty to manage psychosocial risks. [Section 55D](https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/sl-2011-0240#sec.55D) does not instruct anyone to run a course; it asks what you had regard to, and lists workplace interactions and the training and supervision provided to workers. Redesigning the work comes ahead of training. When the risk lives in a conversation between two people, a control has to reach the conversation. Your team leaders practise the check-in with a colleague who says they are fine and is not. Your HR advisers rehearse the return-to-work conversation with the record showing who practised it. Your senior leaders practise listening to a younger colleague without finishing the sentence for them. Your questions ## Questions a people or safety lead asks early The questions that come up early, answered in the words they get asked in. Your team leaders run the huddle where the concern gets raised, and hear how it lands. ### Is training the weakest control we could choose? On its own, yes, and we will say so in the room. Design the work ahead of it. This is for what is left once you have: the manager who still has to raise the concern, and the person who still has to hear it. That conversation is the control, and nobody has practised it. Your supervisors keep a record of what was rehearsed, by whom, and how often they came back to it. ### What do we hold afterwards that shows we did something? Where you set it up that way, a record of what was rehearsed, by whom, and how often they came back to it, rather than an attendance sheet for a module. If anyone asks what you had regard to, that is a stronger answer than a completion rate. Your whole workforce practises on the laptop the work is already on; headsets are for the deepest version. ### Do we need headsets for a workforce this size? Not for the rollout. The same conversation runs typed at the desk, or spoken out loud before the one to one, on the laptop the work is already on. The headset is the deepest version of the practice, for the teams and the moments that need it. Your duty managers rehearse late, at their own desk, on the floor they will have the conversation on. ### How do we get managers to do this without taking them off the floor? They stay on it. The conversation a manager is dreading tends to get rehearsed late, at their own desk, on the floor they will have to have it on. That is the moment this is built for. Your inclusion lead and your safety lead buy the same rehearsal and arrive at it from opposite directions. ### Is this an inclusion program or a safety one? The same rehearsal serves both, which is why this work has been bought under both headings. Google, Metro Trains, Etihad and Optus came to it through inclusion. A people or safety lead arrives at the same scenarios from the other direction, and practises the same conversations. The desk ## The conversation nobody books a room for Most workplace conversations happen at a desk, not in a training suite. A written run takes ten minutes and no booking, on the laptop already open. Then it is said out loud to an empty floor, which is where a manager finds out which sentence they cannot say yet. Feedback read on a screen and feedback said to a face are different skills. Your manager drafts the difficult message and tries the direct version and the softer one. Your manager hears the feedback in their own voice before anyone else does. Your spoken run rehearses the second skill: saying it to a face, not a screen. More moments ## Counters, stockrooms, service bars and the kitchen pass The rest of a working day has its own hard conversations: the click-and-collect counter, the pass on a Friday night, the induction of two new starters. Each is a scenario your staff can run before the shift. Your store managers serve the customer whose order is not there, from behind the counter. Your head chefs correct a line cook at the pass without the whole kitchen hearing it. Your safety officers brief two new starters who are pretending they understood. Through the headset ## An open-plan office, a retail aisle, a staff kitchen Inside the headset the other person is in front of you, waiting for a reply. The retail customer, the team member up for review, the new starter alone in the staff kitchen: each one answers what your staff say, not what they meant to say. Your retail staff face the customer who is waiting for a reply, and give one. Your managers open the review conversation with the person who is waiting for it. Your team welcomes the new starter waiting alone in the staff kitchen. Co-designed ## Scenarios shaped with the people who will run them A team leader rehearses a briefing in the office. A leader practises a reply at the table. A manager rehearses feedback in the meeting room. Each scenario was co-designed with the people who run it, in the room they run it in. Your team leaders rehearse the briefing in the office it will be given in. Your leaders practise the reply at the table, with the room reacting. Your managers rehearse feedback in the meeting room, and hear how it sounds. Working in a broader workplace or enterprise setting? [Open the contact form](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries/workplace-enterprise#contact) Ask our CEO Simon Lowe’s Digital Twin a question - [Our approach to immersive training](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr) - [The PTR VR Library](https://peopletechrevolution.com/xr/ptr-vr-library) - [Who we have worked with](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/who-we-work-with) - [All industries](https://peopletechrevolution.com/work/industries) ## Sources and further reading The two studies the evidence above draws on. ### [Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia](https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2018.1493182) Anthropology Now · 2018 Dobbin and Kalev on why mandatory classroom diversity training so often produces no improvement. ### [Interview with an avatar: Comparing online and virtual reality perspective taking for gender bias in STEM hiring decisions](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269430) PLOS ONE · 2022 The study behind the two cards above: online perspective-taking against embodied VR. The rules behind this work ## Psychosocial hazards, and the American version of the same duty Psychosocial hazard duties, plus the two United States laws a multinational employer meets at the same time. ### [Psychosocial hazards](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/standards/psychosocial-hazards) What a code asks of an employer, and where the hierarchy of controls puts training. ### [California SB 553](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/standards/california-sb-553-training) A written plan and annual training for almost every employer in the state, and the word the statute never uses. ### [New York retail](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/standards/new-york-retail-worker-safety-act) Six topics including de-escalation tactics, annually or every two years depending on headcount. ### [Every US rule, in one place](https://peopletechrevolution.com/learn/standards/workplace-violence-training-united-states) The accreditor, the federal rules and the states, with what each one asks of a training program.