Role play training and creative services

Turning ‘I learned’ into ‘I did’

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Trusted by…

“Interactive training session. Engaging. Good messaging. Quality actors. The role play was first class.”
– Senior leader, Bellway Homes

“Role play that was tailored to our company. Real situations that have happened and could happen again.”
– Manager, Accrofab

“The role play was so real that you really believed they were customers and I genuinely felt for them.”
– Plymouth Community Homes

Choose which type of creative service or interactive learning intervention you need, or select a combination for your learning programmes.

Real Play

‘Purposeful Practice’ or ‘Real Play’ has been proven to effectively embed learning in your people. We provide professionally trained workplace role-players for your learners to practise with to cement their new skills.

Forum Theatre

Actors perform a workplace scenario that represents real-life and your learners are observers invited to comment and give advice to the protagonist. Forum Theatre encourages debate, exploration, engagement, interaction and buy-in.

Virtual Role Play

Virtual Role-Play options provide your people with professionally trained workplace role-players for your learners to practise with to cement their new skills or to demonstrate them for assessment. Remote role-plays ensure flexibility for your company.

Triad Real Play

Participants can trial run real-life workplace interactions, which has been proven to effectively embed learning in your people. Triad Real-Play is where you have a third participant as an observer, who learns by identifying the areas of improvement.

Videos & Digital

As part of your blended learning programme we can provide ‘best practice’ videos and voiceovers to bring the learning to life. We support with creating engaging films that communicate your key messages to your people.

Conferences

We offer solutions to make your conferences more engaging and memorable. With expert help you can avoid information overload at your conference or event and discover an experience orientated conference.

Creative Services

To support your learning objectives, we can create customer learning content that ensures relevance for your learners. Alongside our blended learning consultation services and bespoke training course design, we have an extended Creative Services offering. We provide solutions for supporting with your digital, e-learning videos and soundtracks and also workplace ‘best practice’ demonstrations. Our learning and development experts can also help with, the design of the interactive learning solution, role play analysis and feedback and project management. Our experts can provide,

  • script writing
  • scenario designing
  • coaching for onscreen skills
  • production support
  • voiceover artists
  • presenters
  • roleplay actors
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Which format is right for you?

Best used when
You want people to practise realistic workplace conversations in a safe setting, build confidence through repetition, and receive immediate developmental feedback. This is especially useful when the goal is to turn theory into action.

Typical group size
Usually works well with around 4–6 participants per practice group, depending on how much individual airtime and feedback you want each learner to receive.

Level of audience participation
High. Participants actively take part, practise the conversation themselves, and refine their approach in real time.

Works well for
Leadership conversations, customer service skills, sales conversations, performance discussions, handling challenge or conflict, and any situation where people need to rehearse before doing it for real.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Greater confidence, more consistent communication, stronger behaviour change, clearer self-awareness, and practical actions learners can apply immediately back in the workplace.

Best used when
You want a group to explore a shared workplace challenge together, test different responses, and open up honest discussion around sensitive or complex situations.

Typical group size
Can work well for larger groups of around 10–100+ people, especially when you want collective reflection and live audience input.

Level of audience participation
Medium to high. The audience observes, comments, challenges what they see, and helps shape alternative approaches through the protagonist.

Works well for
Leadership development, culture, inclusion and belonging, customer experience, team dynamics, communication, and topics where discussion and perspective-taking matter as much as practice.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Shared understanding, richer discussion, stronger buy-in, visible exploration of different behaviours, and memorable learning that helps people reflect before acting.

Best used when
You need the benefits of realistic practice or assessment, but with the flexibility of remote delivery across locations or hybrid teams.

Typical group size
Usually suited to 1:1, small-group or breakout-based sessions of around 2–6 people, depending on whether the focus is practice, observation or assessment.

Level of audience participation
High. Participants still practise directly; the only difference is the delivery environment, not the level of engagement.

Works well for
Remote teams, geographically spread organisations, virtual assessment or development centres, coaching practice, customer conversations, management conversations and blended learning programmes.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Flexible delivery, realistic practice at distance, improved communication in virtual settings, and easier rollout across multiple sites or dispersed teams.

Best used when
You want learners to practise a real-life interaction while also learning through structured observation from a third participant.

Typical group size
Best suited to groups of 3 per activity cycle, often repeated across several triads within a wider group.

Level of audience participation
High. One person practises, one responds, and one observes and reflects — so everyone stays involved.

Works well for
Coaching conversations, management skills, feedback practice, sales interactions, customer conversations, peer learning, and programmes where reflective observation adds value alongside live practice.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Deeper reflection, better peer learning, stronger observation skills, richer feedback conversations, and more rounded learning from each practice round.

Best used when
You want to reinforce learning with high-quality digital content, show best practice in action, support a blended programme with video, voiceover or reusable learning assets, or create an internal communications video featuring a senior leader to introduce, reinforce or champion key messages.

Typical group size
Not dependent on live room size — can support single learners, teams or organisation-wide rollouts.

Level of audience participation
Low to medium live participation, but high usefulness as a support tool within wider learning journeys. It is particularly effective when combined with live workshops or role-play sessions.

Works well for
Blended learning programmes, onboarding, internal communications, e-learning support, demonstrations of best practice, and pre- or post-workshop reinforcement.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Clearer communication of expectations, stronger message consistency, and engaging content that helps learning live beyond the session itself.

Best used when
You want to make a conference, event or large audience session more engaging, interactive and memorable — especially when you need more than a standard presentation format.

Typical group size
Suitable for medium to very large audiences, from team events to large conferences.

Level of audience participation
Medium. The level can vary from audience reflection and discussion to live interaction depending on the format you choose.

Works well for
Leadership events, change programmes, people conferences, diversity and inclusion events, internal communications and culture-shaping moments where audience energy matters.

Typical outputs / outcomes
Greater engagement, stronger emotional connection to the message, better retention, less passive listening, and an event experience people talk about afterwards.

Bespoke Workplace Scenarios – How we work with you

We take time to understand your needs and then collaborate with you to create convincing simulations of your real-life workplace challenges.
Our experts are adept at creating a bespoke workplace scenario that considers your staff, company and sector.
These can be led live in a face-to-face format, virtual, or a pre-recorded ‘best practice’ video. Scenarios can include,

  • Manager and employee scenario – for example, dealing with performance issues.
  • Salesperson and customer scenario – could include, selling to a customer or dealing with issues or complaints.
  • Contact Centre Agent and customer scenario – an example would be, managing a challenging phone call or a live chat.
  • Colleague-to-colleague scenario – for example, communicating effectively and defusing conflict.
  • Business-to- client scenario – examples could be, presenting or pitching effectively, successful negotiating, handling difficult phone calls, being assertive or managing a client.

During a live learning event or course, our workplace actors have the skill to re-run as many times as needed for your participant to practice and vary their approach. Constructive developmental feedback is provided by both the facilitator and the role player, enabling the participants to fully understand the impact of their approach and what helpful changes they can make.

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Your journey with us.
From our first conversation, through to the lasting capability in your people.

1. Define your objectives

We will collaborate to define your company objectives for your training and role play section of the training programme. We support, assist and sometimes challenge you, into making the right choice of learning intervention. Our packages are tailored for you, your sector and your people.

2. Collaborate with you

We deep dive into current research and explore your sector, organisation and team. We work closely with you to develop relevant realistic workplace scenarios, for your participants and our real players. If needed, we will visit your workplace to ‘get under the skin’ of your company and gain a true feel for your challenges.

3. Create your scenario

The scenario is written by experienced qualified writers and signed off by you. Our Take Effect professional workplace actor (aka real player) thoroughly prepares prior to the training session. They are already trained in-house to exceptional standards.

4. Provide your learning solution

Your engaging, effective and behaviour changing workplace simulation is provided live. The Take Effect facilitator, along with the professional workplace real players, provide useful feedback for your participant to take away.

Trusted by organisations that want their learning to land

Bellway Homes asked us to help engage senior leaders in critical fire safety conversations through a tailored programme that combined immersive learning, role-play and a bespoke supporting video. The result was a highly interactive experience that achieved strong satisfaction scores, including +95 overall workshop satisfaction, +96 for forum theatre, and +100 for the workplace real-play actors.

See for yourself

Ready to make your learning more practical, engaging and memorable?
Let’s uncover the right role-play solution for your programme.

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