A team-building exercise uses virtual reality and personality profiling to get colleagues to escape a simulated room together, then reflect on how they adapted their behaviour. The problem is that many workplace team-building activities feel artificial or fail to change how people actually collaborate. This project tests whether combining VR puzzles with a simple personality framework—where participants wear badges showing their style and are encouraged to “flex” into other styles—can improve team harmony and performance back on the job. The gap is that most existing approaches either entertain without insight or diagnose without practice. If the approach works, employers could have a repeatable, low-cost tool for improving real-world team dynamics without relying on expensive offsites or lengthy workshops. The impact would be on everyday office interactions, project meetings, and cross-departmental collaboration—the quiet systems that keep organisations running smoothly. The project also generates qualitative data on whether insights from a single immersive session translate into lasting behavioural change, which could inform future training design.
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UCC, the next generation of team building activities. Blending fun, technology, personality styles and interaction to improve team dynamics in the workplace. Participants are grouped into teams of mixed personality styles and challenged as a team to escape from a virtual reality scenario by decoding puzzles and deciphering answers from a handbook. Prior to commencing, the participants are briefed on four differing personality styles which are correlated to simple and relatable visual references. They are then invited to select one of four answers to a challenge-based question. Each answer correlating to one of four personality styles identified above. Participants' personality styles are then 'declared' by wearing a badge using the visual references denoting their style. As the teams are formed they are briefed on the challenge and encouraged to consider their actions in relation to other personalities in the group -- flexing in and out of their own style to improve the harmony and performance of the team. Teams are pitted against each other with the 'winners' being the first or most frequent escapees. During the exercise each team is encouraged to share the VR headset and assistance given in operating the controls. Help is also given in translating the clues in the accompanying manual. When the exercise is complete the teams are invited to reflect amongst themselves on how they performed in relation to their personality style or alternative styles they chose to act on during the exercise. This in relation to how they felt they performed as individuals and as part of a team. Each team feeds back in relation to these reflections. Participants are invited to record what they learnt from the exercise as reference for a subsequent conversation. Participants are also asked to take these insights back to their workplace and seek opportunities to flex in and out of their personality styles to improve the harmony and performance of situations they are involved with. The event closes with participants being advised that contact will be made two weeks following the event for the UCC to understand if their experience or insights have been of use in the workplace and the outcomes of any experiences. We prove to participants they don't need to depend on their innate behavioural style and realise that they can chose from a range of responses to situations in order to improve the harmony and performance of situations they encounter in the workplace.
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