Summary. To implement diversity training in your organization, start by assessing your company’s diversity challenges and goals, then create and conduct your training based on those goals. Remember to measure the results of the training and use that data to inform your next training strategy.
Creating and implementing a diversity training program may sound intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. In this article, we’ll break down what diversity training is, how to implement it, and what the different types of training are. We’ll also discuss the benefits of diversity training programs.
Key Takeaways:
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Diversity training aims to raise awareness of the importance of diversity as well as provide practical tools for improving diversity and inclusion.
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The first step to implementing diversity training is to identify your company’s particular diversity challenges and goals.
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Three types of diversity training are coaching, peer-to-peer learning, and gamification.
What Is Diversity Training?
Diversity training is a professional development program that aims to:
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Raise awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion.
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Define and develop a company culture that celebrates diversity.
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Provide employees with practical ways to combat bias, implement diversity efforts, and successfully work in tandem with people of diverse backgrounds.
Diversity training falls short when it only addresses one or two of these components.
Most companies have diversity goals, but many think that it’s enough to declare that they’re going to be a diverse organization and require employees to attend a few training sessions about why diversity is important. Without practical steps to follow, though, employees may leave inspired, but there will be little to no behavior change.
At the same time, teaching employees how to celebrate, respect, and work with each other’s differences isn’t effective if they don’t understand why they’re doing it. You need to include both the overarching goals and the practical steps required to get there in your training.
How to Implement Diversity Training
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Identify Your Company’s Challenges
Diversity training does no good if it isn’t addressing the particular problems or challenges that your organization is encountering. This means paying attention to the diversity (or lack thereof) of your employees, areas you’ve gotten complaints about or sticking points with implementing diverse hiring practices.
You can also survey your employees to see how they feel about the company’s culture of diversity and inclusion. You’ll likely gain some interesting insight from this survey, and your employees will appreciate your wanting to hear from them.
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Get Leaders Involved
As appropriate for your organization, get a variety of leaders on board with the diversity training planning process. Not only will they bring unique perspectives of the challenges the organization is facing to the table, but they’ll also help create buy-in across the company.
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Set Your Training Goals
You already know the general issues you want to address, but now it’s time to set specific goals or KPIs. This is where having a variety of leaders involved comes in handy, as they can help you make these realistic and relevant for your employees.
Here are some example KPIs:
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Improved diversity and inclusion survey results.
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Improved employee retention.
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Improved productivity metrics that indicate increased teamwork.
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Increased percentage of currently underrepresented demographics.
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Improved employee engagement.
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Improved customer feedback.
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Increased customer reach in underserved demographics.
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Create Your Training
This step has three parts:
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Choosing the types and numbers of training sessions.
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Choosing the curriculum.
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Choosing an expert to implement the training.
It’s usually a best practice to combine several different types of training to get the biggest impact on your efforts. You also shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to training curriculum – there are plenty of tried and true programs out there for you to use.
That goes for instructors and coaches as well. Plenty of people have dedicated their careers to developing and conducting diversity education courses, so tap into their expertise by outsourcing your training.
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Conduct Your Training
Once you’ve planned your diversity training, it’s time to implement it. This starts with communicating with employees, as you have to let them know what’s happening, when it’s happening, and why it’s happening.
If you leave too much to speculation or don’t account for the other work they’re responsible for, they’ll likely come in with suspicion and frustration, which doesn’t allow for much learning.
Instead, communicate expectations well ahead of time, and make it easy for them to attend. Serve a meal or snack to sweeten the deal, and record the session (if it’s live) for employees who couldn’t attend to watch later.
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Measure and Share the Results of the Training
After you’ve conducted all of your diversity training, measure the impact it had. This includes not only the number of people who attended and their responses to the training but also the KPIs you set up at the beginning of this process. It may take a while to see results, but make sure you pay attention to them when you do.
Once you have them, share the results with your staff and discuss them with your leaders so you can adjust your future training strategies accordingly.
Types of Diversity Training
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Awareness-Based Training
Awareness-based training focuses on making employees aware of what diversity is, what the company’s diversity goals are, and why they’re important. While companies shouldn’t stop there in their diversity training, awareness-based is helpful for casting a vision for both new and tenured employees to get behind.
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Skill-Based Training
Skill-based training focuses on the practical know-how needed to support a diverse workforce.
These skills could include anything from training hiring managers on how to expand their applicant pools to include more diverse candidates to teaching employees how to respect the cultural differences between them and their coworkers or customers.
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Coaching
Some companies hire coaches to come and assist individual teams or departments in their diversity efforts. These coaches will assess the team’s current culture and processes and provide feedback and practical tools on how to improve them to support diversity better.
While this type of training isn’t necessarily doable for the entire company at once, it’s a great option for smaller groups. The personalized style of this training is more effective at targeting problem spots and helping set up teams for success with the particular challenges they face than massive group sessions are.
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Peer-to-Peer Learning
Peer-to-peer learning allows employees to help each other by sharing their experiences and perspectives. Usually, this type of training occurs in the form of a roundtable or panel discussion where coworkers can ask and answer questions in an organized way.
This type of training can be especially helpful for fostering empathy and giving minorities a chance to communicate the challenges they face that other employees may not be aware of.
It can also be used to help create understanding and respect by allowing employees to share about their cultures. After all, no one can be culturally sensitive if they don’t know anything about the culture they’re trying to respect.
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Gamification
Games can be a powerful tool for fostering cooperation and teamwork. By putting your employees in simulated scenarios or game-like activities that require them to work together, you’ll help them learn real-life diversity skills. In addition, they’ll also learn the importance of having a team with varied backgrounds and experiences.
The key to this type of training is coaching. You have to have someone set the scene for the game, guide them along the way as needed, and debrief afterward. Otherwise, the lessons to be learned might not be noticed.
Why Diversity Training Programs Are Important
Diversity training programs are important for many reasons ranging from happier employees to an increase in innovation and productivity.
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They increase employee engagement. When people of all backgrounds feel wanted and respected at an organization, they’re more likely to be actively involved in furthering the company. They’re also more likely to stick around longer.
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They strengthen company culture. Prioritizing diversity training programs shows that having a diverse and inclusive workforce is important to your company.
It also helps keep this issue top-of-mind for the rest of your employees, making it easier for them to align their decisions and actions with the company’s values. All of this works together to make a strong, unified company culture.
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They can improve productivity. Many diversity training programs work to improve the ways employees of different backgrounds work together. If this is successful, your organization will enjoy teams that are more unified and, as a result, more productive.
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They can boost innovation. By giving employees the tools they need to seek out and respect others’ perspectives, you’re setting up your organization for a surge of new ideas and strategies.
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They reduce company expenses. When employees feel included and respected at work, they’re less likely to be burnt out or look elsewhere for a job. This lowers turnover, which lowers costs.
In addition, when you have a strong employer brand known for its diversity, you’ll have an easier time attracting top talent to the positions you have open, lowering your recruitment expenses.
Tips for Implementing Diversity Training
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Set reasonable goals for your training. You aren’t going to change your company culture in a one-hour meeting. Instead, focus on one concrete goal per session.
For example, a session with the mission of “Helping employees identify their unconscious biases and giving them three tools they can use to combat those biases” is very doable in a training setting.
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Consider offering multiple, smaller sessions. Do you retain much of the information you learn in a one-hour training session that you attend once a year? Chances are, you don’t, and neither do most other people.
To help the information stick and to show how important diversity training is to your organization, consider offering a series of shorter training sessions or workshops throughout the year rather than one big one.
Using a variety of different types of training is a good idea as well.
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Remember that training shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. While there are some basics that every diversity training program should cover, every organization will have different strengths and weaknesses in this area. Tweak your training as needed to make it more applicable to your employees and their work environments.
For example, nurses working in a town with a significant number of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian immigrants are going to need some different training than those working in a town with a large Hispanic population.
In addition, managers who already run highly diverse teams probably won’t need much help with reaching diverse pools of applicants, but they will likely need some help with fostering teamwork and mutual respect amongst their employees.
The overarching principles will be the same for each diversity training program, but details will need to be adjusted for every organization, team, and session.
Diversity Training FAQ
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What should be included in diversity training?
Awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion, information on how your company culture values diversity, and practical tools to combat bias and improve diversity efforts should be included in diversity training.
Without one of these elements, your employees will be missing either the why or the how behind your efforts, which will render your training far less effective.
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What are the three main steps to creating diversity plans?
The three main steps to creating diversity plans are:
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Identifying where your company is now and setting goals for the future.
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Developing your diversity plan and training programs.
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Implementing your plan and measuring the results.
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What are the six areas of diversity?
The six areas of diversity are:
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Culture
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Race
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Gender/Sexual Orientation
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Religion
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Age
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Disability
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Final Thoughts
Diversity training is a buzzword around many offices in corporate America, but these programs are actually vital to having a healthy, productive company culture.
If you find yourself in charge of implementing a diversity training program at work, take your time researching your company’s needs and finding a program that meets those. With some effort and patience, you’ll see your organization become much more diverse and inclusive.
References
Author
Caitlin Mazur
Caitlin Mazur is a freelance writer at Zippia where she has written 140+ articles that have reached over 1 mil viewers as of June 2023. Caitlin is passionate about helping Zippia’s readers land the jobs of their dreams by offering content that discusses job-seeking advice based on experience and extensive research.
