How we care for our team

16/07/2021

Happy teams make great games. It’s as simple as that! Over the past few years, our studio has been through a journey as we rebalance our focus across both product and our people. As a team we’ve had open conversations on what wellbeing in a workplace means to us, and along the way we’ve created a programme of perks and benefits that we’re proud of.

Health and Wellbeing

• Private Healthcare.
• Private Mental Health support working with key providers, including a psychological coaching talk and access to Mental Health First Aiders.
• Private Dental Scheme.
• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Leave.
• Including bank holidays we offer 33 days holiday as standard, but we also give additional days off for well being breaks in the Summer and at Christmas – taking our paid leave to 38 days. You also have the option to buy and sell 5 days.
• Flexible Working – At London Studio, we believe the future of work is flexibility. Before Covid-19 we had already adopted a Flexible Working policy, and now we are adapting this further to discuss how working from home suits our team. We have room for multiple possibilities as we understand that there will never be a one size fits all. Our core working hours are 10am – 4pm.
• Eyecare Vouchers – including voucher towards purchase of glasses/contacts.
• Health screening through BUPA.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Free onsite gym.
• Free drinks, fruit, and healthy snacks.
• Subsidised Cafe.

Finance

• Annual bonus, milestone bonus and profit share bonus.
• Pension Scheme (the company will double your own contribution up to 5%).
• Life Assurance (4 x salary).
• Income Protection Scheme for long term illness/injury.
• Interest Free Loans – Season Ticket/Bike Purchase/BAFTA Membership.
• Discounted Sony Products.
• Free Games Allocation and PlayStation+ Membership as well as a Games Library where you can borrow additional games and hardware.
• Financial planning assistance.
• Will writing and power of attorney services through James MacKenzie.
• Family discounts i.e. Apple, Pandora, The White Company and many more.
• RAC Breakdown cover.
• Travel Insurance through Chubb.
• Discounted experience days through Virgin.

Personal Development

• Within the Studio we have created learning and development offerings, specifically tailored to our needs plus 10,000s of online courses available to take.
• Personal development fund for all staff. This is an allocated spend on whatever personal development our team would like. This is on top of the funding we already provide should they wish to attend any courses.
• Many Employee Networks to join. We have Represent/BAME@PlayStation, Wellbeing, Pride, Women and Accessibility.
• Creative Days – a 3 day event where everyone in the studio has the opportunity to take time out of their busy work schedule and stretch their creative muscles in something they felt passionate about or wouldn’t usually get to do. The intention is to breaking us out of the day to day and work on something that gets us thinking differently.

• We run a “Speaker Series” – this involves getting key individuals from the industry to come and give a talk to the team. We ask for input from the team on what topics and who they would like to have come and talk.
• We fully support our team in visiting our sister studios, from Media Molecule in Guildford, Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam to the various studios we have in the US (Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Santa Monica etc). This helps to share best practice and knowledge amongst the PlayStation Studios group and builds relationships.

Social

• We host a 2 day annual summer offsite which has a small element of team building and is mainly social time for our team to spend time together outside of their usual environment. In the past we have hired an island off the coast of Essex, completed the Crystal Maze and hired out a whole yacht hotel on the Thames!

• Every Friday we down tools at 5pm and host beer o’clock in our studio social space and our central London, Soho balcony (when in the office), or virtual drinks on Discord.
• We run a Book, Film, Boardgame, Switch, Games and Photography club.
• A monthly Studio Lunch which has been a good way for our teams to mix and eat together (when back in the office). Some times these are themed… we had the best Halloween lunch!
• We have ‘up and coming’ musicians play intimate gigs in the studio in partnership with our Creative Services Group and Sony Music (when back in the office).
• We have supported or subsidised various opt in ‘out of office’ activities during working hours, including Star Wars VR experience, Go-Karting, cinema trips etc.
• We have an annual Christmas party – for the last two years we’ve hired out an entire arcade just for ourselves!
• We have hosted ‘Family and Friends Day’ which saw our team bring in their partners, children and friends into the Studio for the morning, followed by a picnic and games in Regents Park in the afternoon.
• We have a subsidised PlayStation bar in the heart of Soho (where you can sign up to 4 guests!)

Want to join our team?

Check out our latest jobs here.