At Scopely, our mission to inspire play, every day is driven by our Scopeleans. The way we build our games and support our players and world-class gamemakers is underpinned by our commitment to creating a workplace that is diverse, equitable and inclusive. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are fundamental parts of our culture and embodied in our Scopely Tenets, especially how we Care Deeply for our fellow Scopeleans and our player communities.
To me, Global Inclusion Week (GIW) is one of the most meaningful traditions here at Scopely. It’s a moment that allows Scopeleans across the globe to come together to learn from each other, reflect on our shared experiences and areas to grow, and contribute to building a culture where everyone feels welcome and valued.
With our fifth annual GIW behind us,, I wanted to reflect on this year’s theme, Belonging on the go: Inclusion in everyday actions. As a growing, global company, with Scopeleans contributing across time zones, disciplines, cultures and working styles, bringing mindfulness and intentionality to our everyday actions is essential. Intentionally ensuring our every day actions are inclusive and welcoming is how we strengthen our employee experience, and that directly translates into the experience we create for our millions of players around the world.
This theme called attention to the fact that belonging happens in the intentional choices we make every day at Scopely. Whether it’s through inviting new perspectives into a brainstorm to produce a better outcome, designing with accessibility in mind so everyone can enjoy and play, or learning about how different cultures interpret certain cues, these every day actions help to create the psychological safety, trust, creativity and collaboration that our high performing teams need to do their best work.
We anchored our GIW programming around the year’s theme. Our theme felt especially important this year as we invited our newest Niantic games colleagues to join us for their first-ever GIW at Scopely. Scopeleans participated in a mix of “belonging on the go” experiences designed to create easy, yet meaningful ways to engage, reflect, build and grow together as One Scopely. Highlights included sessions on Cultural Competence that focused on the intercultural competency and work effectiveness of our global teams; our Belonging, Inclusion & Growth Festival that celebrated our global footprint through food, talent and local activations; and our Accessibility Showcase, that provided hands-on access to assistive technology, as well as remote self-guided demos so Scopeleans everywhere can learn more about accessibility in games.
Since the timing of GIW coincided with both Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, we brought in some of our external partners to dive deep into topics around mental health, accessibility and AAPI heritage. This year’s programming also leaned into our learning machine philosophy by providing LinkedIn Learning Pathways, where Scopeleans dove into on-demand DEI topics even further, as well as reflections from our Leaders and ERG Leadership on actions they’ve taken to spark belonging in the workplace.
Creating moments of belonging does not stop when Global Inclusion Week ends; It continues through the work we do each day, and in the everyday choices we make, the culture we build together, and the experience we create for one another and for our players.
Sonja Gittens Ottley
Vice President, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion