Eliminating bias and discrimination in the workplace should be fostered in every company. However, today, unconscious biases and discrimination happen in the workplaces even if the company is among the Fortune 500 that provides various diversity training to employees.
According to an article published in USA Today on March 20, 2021, two-thirds of workers want their employers to speak out against racism one year after George Floyd's death.
Companies are working to eliminate racial bias and discrimination in the workplace. But, according to one study, hiring supervisors were 74% more likely to hire people with white-sounding names. Workers of Black color, Latinos, and even Asians continue to be underrepresented.
What is Diversity Training?
Before we will dig into the ways to reduce bias and discrimination in the workplace, let us first find the meaning of diversity training.
Diversity training is a sort of training that focuses on making participants more aware of workplace diversity issues. Aside from this central focus, diversity training teaches people how to connect, collaborate, and work together more effectively, despite their differences.
Color, gender, race, religion, disability, and personal opinions are all examples of diversity concerns in the workplace.
There are two types of diversity training: awareness-based training and skill-based training. Lectures, slideshows, e-learning courses, interactive games, and role-plays are used to deliver diversity training. These types of diversity training are expensive. Every year, known companies in the United States spend about $8 billion on diversity training.
What is the Goal of Diversity Training?
The fundamental purpose of an effective diversity training program is to help employees recognize and tolerate differences among coworkers, resulting in a positive work environment.
Diversity training allows companies to educate their employees on the importance of diversity. While it cannot change an individual's ideas, it may raise awareness, transmit knowledge, and teach employees how to appreciate differences among their coworkers.
As a company owner, hiring manager, or supervisor, you need to know these five things that you can do to help reduce bias and discrimination in the workplace:
1. Measure Diversity Learning Progress
Some question diversity training's ability to drive change, but it remains to be incredibly popular. The critics may be that companies aren't measuring its effectiveness or measuring it but not acting on the data gathered.
The way to measure it is by company-wide employee surveys to assess whether they witness changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion due to their diversity training. You can anonymously invite individuals to participate in the survey and empower them to contribute to the recommended solution.
2. Keep Up with Diversity Training
Diverse training that occurs only a few times a year for a few hours is ineffective in raising awareness and promoting inclusion. Awareness and inclusion must be a part of the everyday work for your diversity training program to be effective.
According to the research, what works is continuing diversity training that includes a skills component and is simply one facet of a more significant DEI endeavor.
3. Voluntary Diversity Training to All Employees
Before you start any meaningful diversity training, be sure you have senior management's support. You'll need buy-in from the top to get the resources you'll need for a successful diversity training program. This endeavor, however, goes beyond top-down support.
It would be best if you also tried to persuade your constituents to participate in diversity training by convincing everyone at all levels that it is in their best interests.
It is best to keep the training voluntary so that participants do not feel threatened or manipulated. Make it crystal clear that the goal is to improve the company. "Increasing diversity will improve the business with team effort," says it in a positive tone.
4. Evaluation of the Progress
Any diversity training should include a follow-up stage in which participants are evaluated after the training to ensure continued training development. Maintain flexibility in your alternatives, adapting to the results of these assessments and crafting the ongoing training experience to the success of your audience.
Chelsea Troy, a CS professor at the University of Chicago, believes that training workers on topics with the expectation that they will not be evaluated after that does not work. To pique everyone's interest in the diversity training material, you must make it a point to inform them about the post-assessment or evaluation.
Consider grading your employees on how well they moderate discussions to ensure that everyone has a chance to contribute, how well they solicit opinions from the appropriate people, how well they give people proper credit for their work, how well they assume that their colleagues have reasonably advanced knowledge, and how well they productively navigate disagreements.
5. Engage Leaders to Identify Areas for Improvement and Solutions
You must be able to engage the employees and the leaders for diversity training to be practical. Experiment with various methods of involving your audience, from interactive learning tools to dynamic, in-person team activities. Diversity training videos may be beneficial to some audiences.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Workplace is Important
A diverse and inclusive workplace is one in which everyone feels equally included and supported in all aspects of the workplace, regardless of who they are or what they do for the company.
An inclusive workplace has a diverse workforce and a diverse workforce engaged, developed, empowered, and trusted.
DEI is essential in every workplace. As a company leader, you must tap into collective intelligence to maximize the potential of every person in the workforce. The "For All" approach aims to create a consistently high-trust workplace experience for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do for the company.