The Thriving Work Community deck
Wellbeing at work and work ability activities are not something done once a year: shared conversation, assessment and development of the work community's wellbeing are needed in everyday life, every day. The Thriving Work Community deck was created so that work communities could easily get to grips with the themes of workplace wellbeing.”The Thriving Work Community game suits absolutely every workplace and every work community, because wellbeing at work belongs to everyone. The game can be used to address different themes of the work community and work ability management. There is no shortage of perspectives to choose from”, say Merja Kurunsaari, Pasi Teräväinen and Serena Paasivuori from Jamk University of Applied Sciences, who acted as the lead architects in developing the game.
By using the Thriving Work Community deck you do not need to start from scratch, so to speak, as the cards guide you to discuss different work community themes together.”The cards make it easier to deal with even difficult subject areas, since the different wellbeing themes are approached through the positive. Discussing the topics together often also broadens everyone's own understanding, as you hear the views and experiences of other members of the work community that might not otherwise get shared in everyday life.”
Cards on the table and off we go
So how does playing work in practice? Starting and playing the game has been made really easy! Every player does of course need an open mind, but after that the game leads you step by step, over a roughly one-hour session, into good conversations and genuinely concrete development ideas.
The idea is that you, as a work community, or say within a project group, together choose one or more perspectives that are meaningful to you and that you want to address in your game session under the guidance of the game leader. You can focus on reflecting, for example, on your work community's future goals, its most inspiring aspects, and its most challenging aspects. And then, cards on the table!
Each player is dealt 52 cards with ready-made wordings, from which the players get to choose the ones they personally find most apt and most descriptive of the work community. Then comes the meat of the game: every player gets an equal chance to justify their card choices, and through these justifications you will hopefully get into conversations that surface different perspectives. You may notice that as you play, your thinking broadens and you learn to understand your colleague even better!
”The best thing about the game is that everyone's perspectives carry equal weight; the tool removes titles and other organisational set-ups: people vote, for example, according to their own genuine opinion rather than echoing someone else's opinion just to be safe. We got to reflect on things from many perspectives we might not otherwise have realised to discuss”, says Nina Laurila from Paytrail, who has played the Thriving Work Community game.Finally, a shared action plan is made
Playing and shared conversation are of course useful and enjoyable in themselves, but so that you leave with something concrete to support further development, at the end you vote among the chosen cards for the most apt and most impactful one, and agree together on the next steps: what is the change we are aiming for, what do we need to do together to achieve it, how much time and resources will it require from us, and what kinds of challenges there may be along the way.
”The crystallisation done together at the end is a really important stage. The goal is that the choices and the actions improving the work community's wellbeing are concrete and achievable, and that people commit to carrying them out”, Kurunsaari and Teräväinen remind us.
”We changed the way our wellbeing committee will operate going forward. In future we will bring the leadership team even more ideas on how the work community and culture should be developed to support wellbeing even better. One concrete idea was drawing up new ground rules for better reconciling work and free time”, Nina Laurila says of the concrete development actions set in motion by the game session.
Why play the Thriving Work Community game?
- An easy and really quick way to get into conversation: pre-considered and tested cards guide the discussion and offer wordings to support it.
- Dealing with even difficult subject areas feels natural, and choosing a card makes it easy to put the elephant in the room on the table.
- The game can be used for many purposes and with many kinds of groups, for example within a work community or a project team.
- Front-line staff, middle management and top management get to talk together naturally through the game.
- No special IT skills are needed, as the game has been built to be really simple. All you need is a smartphone or a computer.
- The game leader spends no time on preparation: easy to adopt and start playing with a group.
- It is also very easy for the game leader to facilitate. The game produces a comprehensive report.
- You can achieve results in little more than an hour.
You can try the Thriving Work Community game in your own work community free of charge by starting Topaasia's 30-day trial period.
Playing works fully remotely, as a hybrid or face to face. The trial period involves no commitment. During the trial you can play this and all other Topaasia games without limits.