How do organisations with thousands of staff, spread across the world in diverse roles and settings, foster a true sense of 'Belonging'?
For Specsavers, belonging is a serious business. It’s vital to showing every one of 45,000 staff that they are valued, and to building resilient teams united behind the drive for a positive work culture.
An ambition to eliminate harassment and bullying is key to Specsavers’ ‘Belonging’ mission. We created three 10-minute modules on recognising, reporting and responding to harassment and bullying and fronted each with a short animation. This storytelling translated policy and process into a human, relatable experience, and told the story from a number of angles. It came to life thanks to the input of a great working group who contributed with real accounts and insights.
“By illustrating the real consequences of what might be considered ‘harmless banter,’ we took the right first step in explaining the policies and processes designed to protect everyone here at Specsavers.”
Head of Learning & Development at Specsavers
Your can read more about our work with Specsavers here.
According to industry figures, the games industry remains the largest of entertainment’s three core sectors (games, TV and film), with 42.1% of total entertainment revenues in 2022. And with 1 in 7 UK households playing some form of digital games, it's not a genre or format to be ignored.
Our founder, David Squire, was talking to BSc Games Computing degree students at Northumbria University about the state of the UK games industry. The guest lecture 'The UK Games Industry, from AAA to creative niche' traced the UK games development landscape, from the big studios to so-called 'serious games' to niche areas like game-based learning - one of Desq's core specialisms for over 20 years.
“We’re proud to be part of the UK games industry and a cornerstone of creative industries”, says David. “From healthcare role-playing games like ‘Just Another Day’ to work-life sim-games, we bring the power of play to learning and development.”
David Squire - Desq Founder
To see a real life example of how we harnessed the power of play with Fujitsu on their Occupational Health & Safety training, for some 45,000 global employees, take a look at our case study.
Our bespoke, game-based learning is set in a 'Safety Awareness World' we created, with virtual replicas of real Fujitsu workplaces, to make safety protocol learning relatable and familiar. With 94% completion of this non-mandatory learning, it's really tapped into the power of play to engage and motivate.
While we didn’t take home an award at the Learning Technologies Awards last year, it was a fantastic evening celebrating excellence in our industry and being nominated alongside such inspiring finalists was a true honour.
However there's still hope! We’re shortlisted for a Learning Excellence Award with our work on the Growing Excellent Managers programme for M&S. Again, big competition...but everything crossed for April 22nd 🤞🤞🤞
Our scenario-based game – part of the Growing Excellent Managers programme – was recommended by 9/10 managers and contributed to a 39% drop in calls to M&S Line Manager Advisory Services.
Your can read more about our work with M&S here.
Are you ready for the Accessibility Act? – From June 2025 all European businesses and their suppliers will have to adhere to the European Accessibility Act (EAA). See our recent post for a summary of key implications for digital learning.
AI in learning – Our Head of Learning, Laura Giles, has just completed Dr Philippa Hardman's brilliant AI and Learning Design Bootcamp. She tells us...
Welcome back Charlotte! We are delighted to have Charlotte back from maternity in a new role on the learning design team, bringing her creative production experience to bear on designing learning experiences. As brilliant and unflappable as ever...
Storyboard is our quarterly newsletter featuring bite-size and digestible L&D news and views from Desq. Each quarter we’ll share the latest from us and our world of digital, human-centred learning design. Sign up to hear the latest from us!