Everyday Inclusion: built with Cornell University
A three-part VR title on unconscious bias, microaggressions and intersectionality, co-designed with Cornell University, and the lead title in PTR's inclusion library since 2018.
Feel it first, then talk about it
Everyday Inclusion was co-designed with Cornell University and diversity and inclusion expert Angela Winfield.
It gives people a first-hand experience of bias in the workplace, and gives managers a way to practise the difficult conversation that follows.
What Cornell and PTR set out to change
Most inclusion training tells people what bias looks like: slides, definitions, hypothetical examples. Cornell and PTR wanted people to feel it from the inside, and then to have somewhere to practise the response.
Bias is easy to define and hard to notice
A definition does not help in the meeting where a colleague is talked over for the third time. Recognising it in the moment is the skill, and it takes practice.
Everyday Inclusion puts people in that meeting, and then in the manager's chair afterwards.
The three parts
Unconscious bias, microaggressions and intersectionality, each experienced first-hand, each followed by the conversation a manager has to be able to lead with empathy and confidence.
In three languages, for more than one workplace
Everyday Inclusion is available in English, French and German. It began with Cornell and has since run with airlines, rail operators and technology companies, each time alongside a facilitated discussion rather than as a headset session on its own.
Where it has run
One of PTR's longest-running titles, and the module PTR drew on for Etihad Airways' cabin crew inclusion pilot and for Metro Trains' gender equity workshops.
Cabin crew, rail leaders, and the room in between
At Etihad it ran over two days with the Mind Shift module and a facilitated Yarning Circle. At Metro Trains it anchored three workshops split by audience: head office, operational leaders and a combined leadership group.
"Through that work, we realized the immense potential of VR to simulate situations that are difficult to replicate or unsafe to experience in reality. This insight led us to expand our focus on using VR as a tool for authentic, person-centered training, particularly in areas like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)."
Simon Lowe
CEO, People Tech Revolution. The Cusp of a Revolution, Global Best Practice Group, October 2024
Still in use years on
Cornell and Angela Winfield's job was to keep the scenarios grounded in experiences of bias people had reported. That grounding is why the title was still being booked years after 2018, by organisations a long way from a university campus.
A family of titles
Everyday Inclusion was originally created with Equal Reality, a subsidiary of People Tech Revolution, and has since grown into a stand-alone product line within the PTR VR Library, alongside its sibling titles.
Finding Common Ground, Speak to Me Normally, and the custom builds
The Library siblings are Finding Common Ground and Speak to Me Normally.
Beside them sit PTR's custom builds on the same theme: an experience for Optus, built to help its staff understand and address workplace bias, and Archer's Lab, a VR co-working space for the Enterprising Young Women Program.
The conversations a manager gets one shot at
The comment in the corridor, the desk check-in that goes wrong, the one-to-one where the wrong word costs trust. Everyday Inclusion is practice for those; these are the rooms PTR builds them in.
Want to bring Everyday Inclusion to your own team?
Sources
PTR's own film of the title, narrated by its in-experience guide, and the Library page that describes it.
Everyday Inclusion VR
A walkthrough of the Everyday Inclusion experience, narrated by the in-experience guide character Sarah.
