Bring the boldest week in Britain to work.
This November, thousands of men will wear painted nails for a week. To the site, the office, the pub, the school run. It's part of a national experiment measuring what changes when good men take the lid off. Over 400 men have already done it. 83% had conversations they'd never had before. 93% would do it again.
Your workplace can be part of it for less than the cost of getting the coffees in, per head. One person decides, one payment, one pack. No procurement, no away day, no one from HR required (unless that's you, in which case, welcome).
Photo to come: a workplace crew, nails on
Why it works
The nails are the headline. The outcomes are the point.
Here's the interesting bit for anyone who runs a team. The research behind Hard As Nails is about identity rigidity: the narrower the rules people carry about who they're allowed to be, the worse the decisions get. Rigid norms make people slower to ask for help, slower to flag problems, slower to say the thing everyone's thinking. That's not a wellbeing issue. That's a performance issue wearing a wellbeing costume.
A week of painted nails turns out to be a remarkably efficient way to loosen the rules. In our national study, run with validated psychological scales and independent academic oversight, men who did the week showed a statistically significant increase in empathy, a rise in allyship, a 38% uplift in readiness to step in when something's off, and significant movement away from restrictive norms on the Man Box scale. In plain English: more candour, more courage, more people saying the true thing sooner.
So yes, it's an inclusion and diversity thing, and it's the most interesting one your company will be offered this year. It's also leadership development disguised as a week of great nails. The nails get everyone in the room. What people say to each other once they're in it is what you'll still be feeling in your business next spring.
The offer
What every workplace gets.
Same product, same science, same November, whatever your size. The ladder just matches the price to the size of your crew. Every tier includes:
The Workplace Pack.
The complete how-to: picking your week, rallying your blokes, launch-day options, and word-for-word answers for when the banter starts. It will. That's the point.
Before and after measures.
Every man who takes part gets his own before and after scores on validated measures of identity norms, empathy and workplace courage. And you see what shifted across your workplace as a whole. Real evidence, not a feedback form.
Live national briefings.
Join the live web briefings for everything you need to know, recorded so the night shift can catch up.
Meeting guides and templates.
Conversation guides, session templates and videos for the internal conversations, so the week runs itself. During the week your job is: nothing. That's the design.
The campaign asset pack.
Posters, email copy, digital and print assets, ready for the intranet, the tea room wall and the toolbox talk.
A salon discount for your crew.
A local salon code for a group visit. Half the fun is a row of blokes in the chairs.
The national community.
National and regional WhatsApp groups, so nobody's the only man in the county with Enchanted Toadstool nails.
Your tally on the national board.
A tracked link so every sign-up counts to your workplace as well as the nation. Site office versus head office is a rivalry we actively encourage.
A place in the story.
Business participation is this year's story, and the press ask us weekly. Every participating organisation goes on the press request list.
A real person.
A dedicated human at the end of an email, before, during and after the week. Not a chatbot, not a ticket queue.
Every single thing above can go bespoke: your logo, your cohort, your data, your people. That's the 100+ partner route, or a message away for anyone else.
The tiers
Pick the size of your crew.
1–25 people
£250The whole campaign, sized for the person who makes things happen in your workplace. This is a Macmillan coffee morning with nail varnish and a research team behind it. One decision, one pack, the best week your lot have had at work.
That's £10 a head or less. You've spent more on a leaving card.
Get the pack →25–50 people
£500Everything above, for the firm that's big enough for proper rivalries and small enough that word travels by Wednesday. If people-stuff is your desk (along with payroll, and the fire drill, and everything else), the pack does the heavy lifting: what to say, what to send, what happens when. Nothing lands back on you.
Around a tenner a head. Less than the biscuits budget.
Get the pack →50–100 people
£1,000Everything above, at the scale where it starts showing up in how the place feels. Your organisation joins the national dataset, your tally goes on the national board, and when the results publish you'll have been part of the largest study of its kind ever run. Evidence your board will actually remember.
£10 to £20 a head. Compare that with any training day you've ever bought, then compare what people say about it a year later.
Get the pack →The honesty box
£50If £250 is honestly out of reach, the men's shed, the community club, the tiny charity, pay £50 and get the lot. No forms, no proving anything, no difference in what you receive. We'd rather have you in than keep the ladder tidy. And if you're a healthy business eyeing the cheap ticket: behave.
Chuck us £50 →100+ people
Partner with usAt your size this stops being a purchase and starts being a partnership. We have years of experience running immersive, interactive, in-person events, programmes and experiments inside large organisations, government departments, NGOs and companies. Lunch and learns, workshops, display materials, a pop-up nail salon in reception. All of it tailored to what your organisation needs.
Hard As Nails goes live as a national campaign in June 2027, so there's plenty of time to plan properly, and one more national pilot runs in November 2026 if you want to move sooner.
If you'd like to talk through what a bespoke partnership could look like, whether it's the quickest easy win or a multi-year headline partnership, drop Emma a line: emma@hard-as-nails.com. One email, and the partner pack comes back with everything, including the number. Or leave your details and Emma will come to you:
Wates and a global tech company are already running it this November.
Whatever the size of your crew, this costs less per head than getting the coffees in, and what it starts lasts a lot longer.
