by Diversity training is any program designed to facilitate positive intergroup interaction, reduce prejudice and discrimination, and generally teach individuals who are different from others how to work together effectively.
Diversity training is training delivered to make participants more aware of diversity issues in the workplace, their own beliefs on diversity, as well as provide skills to help them interact, collaborate and work more closely with people that have different qualities to their own.
Diversity training is often aimed to meet objectives such as attracting and retaining customers and productive workers; maintaining high employee morale; and/or fostering understanding and harmony between workers.
Despite purported and intended benefits, systematic studies have not shown benefits to forced diversity training and instead show that they can backfire and lead to reductions in diversity and to discrimination complaints being taken less seriously.
Findings on diversity trainings are mixed. According to Harvard University sociologist Frank Dobbin, there is no evidence to indicate that anti-bias training leads to increases in the number of women or people of color in management positions. A 2009 Annual Review of Psychology study concluded, “We currently do not know whether a wide range of programs and policies tend to work on average,” with the authors of the study stating in 2020 that as the quality of studies increases, the effect size of anti-bias training dwindles.
According to a 2006 study in the American Sociological Review, “diversity training and diversity evaluations are least effective at increasing the share of white women, black women, and black men in management.” A meta-analysis suggests that diversity training could have a relatively large effect on cognitive-based and skill-based training outcomes. An analysis of data from over 800 firms over 30 years shows that diversity training and grievance procedures backfires and leads to reductions in the diversity of the firms workforce. A 2013 study found that the presence of a diversity program in a workplace made high-status subjects less likely to take discrimination complaints seriously.
Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin conducted a comprehensive review of cultural diversity training conducted in 830 midsize to large U.S. workplaces over a thirty one-year period. The results showed that diversity training was followed by a decrease of anywhere from 7.5–10% in the number of women in management. The percentage of black men in top positions fell by 12 percent. Similar effects were shown for Latinos and Asians. The study did not find that all diversity training is ineffective. Mandatory training programs offered to protect against discrimination lawsuits were called into question. Voluntary diversity training participation to advance organization’s business goals was associated with increased diversity at the management level; voluntary services resulted in near triple digit increases for black, Hispanic, and Asian men.
A 2021 meta-analysis found a lack of high quality studies on the efficacy of diversity training. The researchers concluded that “while the small number of experimental studies provide encouraging average effects. the effects shrink when the training are conducted in real-world workplace settings, when the outcomes are measured at a greater time distance than immediately following the intervention, and, most importantly, when the sample size is large enough to produce reliable results.”
From a business perspective, diversity training is seen to have a number of benefits such as increased collaboration and relational skills, protecting against violations of discrimination legislation (therefore reducing the firm’s risk profile) and empowering those from underrepresented groups to feel more confident and valued in the workplace.
Despite these perceived benefits, diversity training attracts significant criticism some question its ability to drive change. According to some critics, it may be counterproductive because it reinforces the differences between people rather than celebrating them.
Diversity training can be divided into two categories:
Skill-based training
This deals with developing employees’ proficiency in handling diversity in the workplace. Various tools are used to take the employees from the awareness to the proficiency stage. The tools used help in improving employees’ interpretation of cross-cultural differences, communication with people from different cultures, and adaptability.
Awareness-based training:
This type of training is generally used as a sensitizer for employees. It deals with making employees aware of the importance of diversity in business. It also makes employees aware of their prejudices and cultural assumptions about others. The training uses case studies and experiential exercises as the method of training implementation.
Mentoring for Diversity
In a corporate world, diversity in the organization does no longer exist; however, in many organizations wants to maintain a collaborative competitive advantage in a global environment. Many organization mentor’s minority groups and deploys wide range of knowledge, skills and motivate the talented employees from different cultural backgrounds, sexes, or races/ethnicities to perform their best in reaching organization goals. Many companies have a wide array of cultural workforce where employees showcase different perspectives and skills to the table. A major challenge organization faces during the implementation of diversity training to employees to collaborate and work together to achieve a common goal of an organization.
Diversity audits
Diversity Audits are a very daunting task for HR which are formal assessments that evaluate the current situation, they are mostly involved in managing employee management attitudes such as their periodical review related to policies & procedures. Hence the diversity audits serves as a critical to manage the thought process of the employee within the organization.
