Happy Thursday, everyone. I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.
This week in workplace whiplash 🌀
This week’s headlines show how organisations are trying to balance capability, culture, and very human behaviour, often all at once:
🤖 PwC bets big on AI capability, not shortcuts
PwC has announced a major overhaul of its AI training strategy, shifting away from generic courses toward role-specific, embedded learning across the firm. The move reflects a growing recognition that AI advantage comes from how well people can actually use the tools in their day-to-day work, not from surface-level upskilling.
👉HR Grapevine💔 February brings personal stress into the workplace
New reporting suggests February can be an emotionally difficult month for many workers, with personal pressures around relationships, finances, and loneliness affecting how people show up at work. The piece highlights how emotional life doesn’t neatly stay outside the office, even as workplaces often expect business as usual.
👉Human Resources Director🏈 Super Bowl hangovers may cost employers billions
New analysis suggests Super Bowl LX could cost US employers up to $1.9 billion in lost productivity, driven by sick days, lateness, and post-game fatigue. Once again, a major cultural event exposes how tightly work expectations are tied to human behaviour, whether organisations plan for it or not.
👉HR Grapevine
Speaking of the Super Bowl… this week we look at how one small but deliberate design choice on the biggest stage in the world offered a surprising lesson in what meaningful inclusion actually looks like.
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I didn’t expect the Super Bowl to prompt me to rethink how workplaces approach inclusion.
But after the halftime show, I read a New York Times article on the use of Puerto Rican Sign Language during the Super Bowl performance that explained why the organisers chose a culturally specific form of sign language rather than defaulting to the most familiar option. Accessibility as an integral part of the show rather than an add-on.
That choice required extra effort. It also required someone to ask a more precise question than “what counts as accessible?”
They asked who the performance was actually for.
But sadly, workplaces rarely do the same.
🧠The behavioural science lens
What made that choice work so well wasn’t symbolism, but how closely it aligned with what we know about how people experience inclusion in practice:
People experience inclusion through defaults, not intentions: Most exclusion doesn’t come from overt decisions. It comes from defaults that quietly reflect who systems were originally built for. Inclusive design work shows that when you design around an assumed “average” user, anyone who falls outside that norm is left adapting, compensating, or opting out. Microsoft’s Inclusive Design approach, starts from this exact insight: exclusion is usually a design failure, not a people failure.
Accessibility breaks down when it’s treated like a feature: Work on accessibility and usability consistently shows that access, inclusion, and experience are inseparable. When accessibility is treated as a box to tick rather than part of how people actually interact with systems, it rarely works as intended. The W3C’s guidance on accessibility, usability, and inclusion is blunt on this point: separating these concepts leads to weaker, more fragile design in practice.
One-size solutions struggle in human systems: Universal design is often misunderstood as standardisation. In reality, its principles emphasise flexibility and responsiveness to variation. Guidance from Ireland’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design highlights that inclusive systems work best when they can adapt to different languages, contexts, and capabilities rather than enforcing a single “correct” way of engaging.
People decide whether inclusion is real by watching what happens under pressure: Research on psychological safety shows that people infer whether they belong by observing everyday behaviour, especially in moments of uncertainty or risk. Amy Edmondson’s foundational work on psychological safety demonstrates that inclusion is experienced through who speaks up, who is listened to, and whose input shapes decisions, not through policy statements or values decks.
🚀What this means for leaders
Inclusion doesn’t usually fail because leaders don’t care. It fails because systems are designed around convenience rather than context.
A few implications worth sitting with:
Default choices are design choices: The most “obvious” or familiar option often reflects who the system was originally built for. Inclusion improves when leaders pause to question defaults rather than treating them as neutral.
Lived experience beats theoretical expertise: The most effective inclusion decisions are shaped by people who actually use the system, not just those responsible for approving it. Representation matters most upstream, at the point of design.
Specificity signals seriousness: Broad, neutral solutions often read as generic. Thoughtful, context-aware choices send a clearer signal about who belongs and who has been considered.
Inclusion shows up before policy does: People decide whether an organisation is inclusive long before they read its policies. They watch meetings, decision-making, and whose needs are anticipated without being asked.
💬 Final thoughts
The Super Bowl's use of Puerto Rican Sign Language worked because it was specific.
Workplaces often aim for inclusion that looks broad and neutral. What people respond to is inclusion that feels considered and grounded in reality.
Belonging grows when people recognise themselves in the systems around them. That rarely happens by accident. It happens when someone takes the time to design with care.
How's the depth of today's edition?
If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.
Until next week,
Frank
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