Hasbro’s 'Bring kids to work' day goes virtual this year

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Hasbro Hong Kong launched its first virtual Bring kids to work day in August as the city faces a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Bring kids to work day website, which can be accessed remotely between 3-31 August, enables employees and their families to explore Hasbro’s Hong Kong office through virtual reality and experience more than 50 activities designed by the HR team. 

“Normally we will have many physically based activities in each of our offices for the kids to play.  Each office arranged their own day. By adopting the virtual reality, we were able to centrally co-ordinate the programme across our offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, India and Vietnam,” said Timothy Bean, vice president of HR at Hasbro.

Apart from playing games themed after Hasbro's most popular brands such as Transformers, Monopoly and My Little Pony, children can learn how to cook, dance and learn paper folding through videos. 

The VR tour also features a storytelling session of Peppa Pig by Michael Moriarty, managing director HFE & SVP Global Sourcing, Baby Shark dance by the company’s legal VP and a cooking session with Bean. 

“There are many age groups when we talk about ‘kids’, hence our category leaders came up with different activities to cover all age groups,” Bean said. 

Asked whether Hasbro considered calling off the event, he said: “Bring Kids to work day is a signature event to engage our staff, to allow them to bring their kids to the office, to learn more about what mum and dad do at work each day and enjoy the fun of being a toy maker, hence we have never consider cancelling the event.

“We also know with kids on holidays and parents working from home that we needed to help keep their children engaged. Our thinking was always how we can do this differently while still giving the kids a great experience of being at Hasbro,” he added.

Amid Hong Kong’s third wave, Hasbro Hong Kong adopted work-from-home arrangement, while offering flexible work hours. 

In March, the company debut a global initiative 'Bring Home the Fun' to keep kids occupied and engaged and support Hasbro’s working parents who are spending more time at home and indoors. It features games and challenges for kids and mindfulness videos and parenting articles for parents.