Ask Me Anything: Tailored Workshops for More Empathetic Workplaces by The Big Issue
Ask Me Anything is a new and immersive workshop by The Big Issue designed to improve staff confidence in interacting with clients or customers experiencing hardship and disadvantage.
Every Ask Me Anything workshop is tailored to your organisation and industry, drawing on the unique lived experience of our speaker panel to explore the challenges, interactions and systems most relevant to your staff.
Whether you work in banking, financial services, healthcare, hospitals, allied health, telecommunications, utilities, local government, housing, community services, customer service, education or another people-focused sector, we shape each workshop around the real-world situations your teams encounter.
Our Lived Experience Speakers can share insights into topics such as:
- Navigating financial hardship and barriers to accessing essential services.
- Being discharged from hospital without stable housing or a fixed address.
- Interacting with banks, utilities, telecommunications providers and hardship teams.
- Experiences with healthcare professionals, social workers, housing services and community organisations.
- Interactions with emergency services and frontline support agencies.
- The realities of homelessness and the everyday barriers people face.
- Challenging stereotypes and building greater understanding through open, facilitated discussion.
- Industry-specific customer, client or service scenarios that reflect your organisation’s work, goals and challenges.
Reach out to discuss how Ask Me Anything workshops could fit into your organisation’s learning and development programs.
Flexible Delivery Options
Our Ask Me Anything workshops are designed to fit your organisation’s needs, making it easy to incorporate them into your learning and development, team engagement or professional development programs.
- 90-minute facilitated workshops designed to maximise engagement and discussion.
- Delivered in person or online, giving your team the flexibility to participate wherever they are.
- Flexible locations — we can deliver workshops at your workplace, our venue, a conference or event space, or virtually.
- Tailored to your organisation — every session is customised to your industry, your team and the customer, client or community challenges you want to explore.
Looking for a More Hands-On Team Building Experience?
If you’re after a highly interactive team-building activity, explore The Big Issue Challenge.
This half-day corporate experience combines a powerful lived experience presentation with an opportunity to partner with a Big Issue Vendor and experience magazine selling firsthand. Working in teams, participants gain a deeper understanding of homelessness and disadvantage while building empathy, resilience, communication and problem-solving skills in a unique real-world setting.
“It’s confronting to think that an offer of help can also be seen as a threat to someone…I really found that it was a worthwhile session. I love to hear about other people’s stories. They help us to get a better understanding, especially if it’s around a topic we don’t experience or know a lot about.”
Rachel Grieves, Customer Service Manager, Bank Australia
