Training designed with the sector, not just delivered to it.
Psychosocial safety · Vicarious trauma · Volunteer + paid workforce dynamics · Values-led cultures
The community sector and not-for-profits run on people. Frontline community workers carrying the weight of clients in crisis. Volunteer coordinators managing mixed paid-volunteer teams. Faith-based, multicultural, disability, family violence and aged care services delivering on missions written decades before the current funding model. The training your people need has to honour that complexity - and most off-the-shelf options don't.
The Experience Lab partners with the sector rather than parachuting in. Our most sensitive workplace plays - Behind Closed Doors on family violence, This FIFO Life of Brian on FIFO mental health - were co-developed with specialist partners (DART Group; the WA Mental Health Commission) who held script approval, vetted the characters, sat in on rehearsals and shaped the facilitator framing. We've delivered into BaptistCare, UnitingCare West, Ishar, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the Australian Medical Association, plus a long list of community-sector employers across WA.
Community and NFP leaders are protective of their workforces - and they should be. The frontline workers, case managers, volunteers and clinicians your organisation employs are exposed to material that the average corporate training designer doesn't fully understand. Domestic violence. Suicide. Trauma disclosure. Dispossession. Lived experience of inequity. The wrong scenario, badly handled, can do harm.
That's why we work in partnership when the topic calls for it. DART Group's specialists vetted Behind Closed Doors through every stage of development. The WA Mental Health Commission's This FIFO Life team partnered on This FIFO Life of Brian. Where lived experience matters, we don't outsource it to imagination - we co-develop with the people whose entire careers are spent inside the work.
What we get asked for most.
Tackling Psychosocial Hazards
Frontline community workers, case managers and volunteers carry vicarious trauma, exposure-related fatigue and the structural conditions of resource-constrained service delivery. The new WHS Code of Practice on psychosocial hazards applies to your workforce as much as it does to mining. Our work bri
Explore the topicCultivating Courageous Conversations
The conversations community-sector workers have least practice for and most fear of - escalating concerns to a manager, raising a safeguarding flag, intervening between volunteers, holding a boundary with a client - rehearsed in a low-stakes practice round before participants have to do them under l
Explore the topicLiving The Values
NFPs are values-led by design - and the values often pre-date the current workforce and funding model. Our values work translates the founding language into actual behaviour: characters, scenes, dilemmas, decisions that participants can connect to the work they do day-to-day.
Explore the topicRealising Respectful Workplaces
The cross-cutting culture work that holds harassment, bullying, psychosocial safety and inclusion together. For NFPs with mixed paid-volunteer workforces, sessional staff, contractor support workers and a multicultural client base, the framing matters - because piecemeal compliance work doesn't conn
Explore the topicEmbracing Diversity And Inclusion
Inclusion work pitched at workforces who already do inclusion as a job - and who can spot a generic D&I framework within ten minutes. Our delivery names the specific conditions community-sector workforces face, including culturally diverse client bases, lived-experience workers, and the dynamics tha
Explore the topicSpotting the Signs of Domestic Violence
Family-violence primary prevention is core territory for community and NFP workforces - many of whom support survivors as part of their service offer. Co-developed with DART Group, our Behind Closed Doors session builds awareness, language and Upstander capability across the workforce.
Explore the topicWord from the sector.
“Thank you to The Experience Lab. A warm and professional team to work with.”— General Manager, People & Culture, BaptistCare
“What you teach is very special and very helpful.”— Leadership Consultant, Catholic Education WA
Training Delivered Differently
Designing training for a community-sector group?
Twenty minutes with Jacob will give you a clear sense of where the experiential layer fits your service, what it looks like for your workforce, and how it can be scoped honestly to your budget.