Jeff Harry

Jeff Harry is a keynote speaker and Top 100 HR Influencer, selected by BambooHR and Engagedly for his organizational development work on addressing toxicity in the workplace. Through his consultancy, Rediscover Your Play, he combines positive psychology and play to help teams build psychological safety and work through their biggest challenges.

Solving Workplace Problems Through Play

Jeff has spent more than 15 years facilitating and speaking on how a play-oriented approach can heal workplace dysfunction, working directly with organizations including Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook to help their staff bring more play into daily work. His sharpest current argument is about where AI should and shouldn't go: he wants AI to take the "laundry," the drudgery and admin, not the brainstorming, ideation, and thought leadership work that's actually the fun and creative part of most jobs. He points to Google's old 20% rule (which produced Gmail, AdSense, and Google News) as proof that giving people even a little unstructured time to play produces real business value, not just goodwill. He argues the biggest reason employees leave organizations is that they don't feel seen, heard, appreciated, and valued, and that tapping into play values helps people connect to their work more deeply, reducing burnout and increasing loyalty. He has presented at conferences including INBOUND, SXSW, SHRM National, and Australia's Pausefest, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, NPR, Forbes, and CNN.

Topics Jeff speaks on

• Why AI should take the drudgery, not the fun, creative work
• Using play to build psychological safety at work
• Addressing toxicity and office politics
• Why acknowledging past harm has to come before psychological safety
• Rediscovering curiosity and flow in a career

Sessions with Achieve

Jeff is a featured guest on the Achieve webcast "Human-Centered Leadership: Transformation Through Creativity and Connection" (April 9, 2026), presented in partnership with Workhuman and moderated by Darcy Jacobsen, alongside fellow speaker Eric M. Bailey, whom he first met at Workhuman Live in 2019. In it, Jeff argues that leaders need to acknowledge and apologize for past organizational harm before real psychological safety is possible, and that companies chasing AI often "steal the fun jobs" instead of freeing people up to do more of them.

Connect

• Jeff Harry on LinkedIn
• Rediscover Your Play

Want more on what it actually takes to build a psychologically safe, engaged team? Learn more about the Achieve Leadership Network.