Do diversity training programs offer real business benefits or are they just a box-ticking exercise? Personnel Today’s Alex Blyth investigates
Do diversity training programs offer real business benefits or are they just a box-ticking exercise? Personnel Today’s Alex Blyth investigates
UK employers have followed hot on the heels of their US counterparts to introduce diversity training programs. In fact, they are so keen that the UK-based Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) estimates that nearly 70 per cent of UK organisations now have diversity policies in place. And a key element in ensuring these policies work is training.
Legislation has undoubtedly driven the increase in diversity programs. Laws preventing discrimination against workers on the grounds of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation are well established, and anti-ageism legislation will come through in October later this year. So what’s the true motive behind the commercial world’s burgeoning interest in diversity training? Deep devotion to the cause or simply the need to comply?
“I’ve seen plenty of examples of organisations that are doing diversity training just because legislation tells them they have to,” says Paula Logan, HR and corporate services director at Network Housing Group, a social housing organisation operating in the northern and eastern boroughs of London.
She is not opposed to the idea of making her staff more aware of the diverse needs of their customers and one another. Network Housing is an organisation where diversity is unavoidable – about 60 per cent of its employees are from black or other ethnic minority groups, as are at least half of the people it houses. So, for example, if the receptionists can only speak English, they will have trouble understanding many of the customers they deal with.
Nor is Logan opposed to diversity training – where it is done properly. But she is not afraid to admit that, all too often, diversity training is done as nothing more than a box-ticking exercise.
Wrong reasons
Karen Waltham, diversity expert at career management consultancy Fairplace Diversity, says instituting a program because legislation requires it is doing it for the wrong reasons.
“Training should be seen as an attempt to change thoughts and culture,” she says. “A half-day course cannot achieve this.”
Yet the most common complaint about diversity training is that organisations do it just to comply with anti-discrimination legislation and to ensure that they are covered in the event of an employment tribunal case. Some critics even claim that it can breed prejudice where there was none, by drawing attention to people’s differences.
Others believe that many organisations simply want to be seen to be doing something about diversity.
Carol Woodhams, senior lecturer in HR management at ManchesterMetropolitanUniversity, says: “Many senior executives understand the importance of diversity and want to do something about it, so they spend a lot of money on expensive training consultants, and then just leave it at that. But this issue can’t be dealt with so easily or quickly.”
Elaine Swan, senior teaching fellow at LancasterUniversityManagementSchool, believes that there is too much emphasis on targets and outcomes.
“At the most recent Black Leadership Initiative in Further Education conference, there was repeated allusion to the tick-box approach to diversity, the emphasis on targets and outcomes, and how it distracts attention from the real work,” she says. “The provision of diversity training can be seen as one of the results of this bureaucratisation; as part of the way organisations demonstrate that they are ‘committed’ to equality and diversity.”
Very often this commitment manifests itself in a sheep dip approach to training. All employees are sent on the same half-day training course about diversity, or directed to a generic online training tool. As Pam Brown, head of diversity at Veredus Leadership Solutions, says: “The initial reaction in many organisations has been one of a single hit of training for all. This rarely has a lasting impact and does not address different roles and responsibilities of staff.”
In addition, diversity training is often designed and viewed as an unimportant add-on to ‘real’ training.
Binna Kandola, the co-founder of occupational psychologists Pearn Kandola, says: “I had one client that ran three-day training courses for its recruitment teams. Two days were spent on the practicalities of interviewing, and then they got me in for the third day to cover diversity. The participants felt they’d covered everything useful in the first two days so it was a waste of time.”
Not every employer feels this way, however. Many major corporations are now recognising how important it is to be aware of the diverse needs of employees, colleagues and customers, as Abbas Jaffer, head of diversity for Europe at investment bank Morgan Stanley, explains.
“The ethnic minorities in this country now contribute some 40 per cent of the student population,”he says. “The old perception of key workers being white, middle-class males is being swept away. This means that, if we want to identify, attract and develop the best people, we simply can’t afford to be hampered by outdated ideas.”
But plenty of organisations run diversity training with the right intentions, insists Kit Thacker, head of diversity and employment law at learning and development consultancy, MaST.
“We actually turned down a potential client because we felt that the senior management hadn’t bought into the idea. On the other hand we’re now working with one international security firm that is looking into how to relate to clients on diversity issues. This is no box-ticking exercise; this is really making a difference.”
Best practice
For many customer-facing organisations, diversity training is increasingly a core part of best practice.
Tommie Lewis, senior manager for global diversity at software and consultancy provider Convergys, says: “Here, diversity training is anything but a tick-box exercise. It is a business imperative. Our curriculum of online, instructor-led and experiential training provides employees with the opportunity to develop specific skills for managing the numerous dimensions of workforce diversity, organisational diversity, and business diversity. Because our business is people, this is all about competitive advantage.”
Finally, the growth of innovative diversity training techniques has increased their likelihood of making a measurable difference. Interact employs about 1,000 actors, directors and playwrights, providing training through drama.
“We do role-playing, which actually shows people what happens when they make throwaway comments about, say, people in turbans,” says senior partner Ian Jessup. “We also do linguistic audits, recording the language people use and playing it back to them. As with so much issue-based training, with diversity training it really helps if you can bring it alive, making it more than just a policy; just another legal requirement fulfilled.”
While some organisations are successfully training their staff on diversity, many more are yet to do any at all. A recent survey of more than 300 HR managers by e-learning specialist Fuel found that only 53 per cent had received any training on diversity and the UKDisability Discrimination Act. And experts agree that if diversity training is to be effective it must be integrated with other training, so that staff see it as an essential to their work. It must also be done as part of a broader program of long-term culture change.
Jeremy Blain, managing director of training provider Cegos, says: “Training on its own can rarely improve an organisation’s performance on diversity. To do this you need to change behaviour and engage management in the follow up. You need to really embed and live the training.”
Diversity in practice: BT
BT is cited by many diversity experts as a leading example of a company that is taking diversity training seriously, and so achieving results. Caroline Waters, director of people and policy at BT, explains how they are achieving this.
"We have built it into other types of training so that it is always relevant, timely and interesting." So, while BT engineers can access specific diversity training courses, they will also encounter it in their general customer service training. For instance, when finding out about home visits they will learn how to respect various religious traditions, or how to be sensitive to a customer with a disability.
As well as this training, BT has appointed hundreds of diversity coaches. These are peer-group experts who are available to colleagues who want to ask for advice about a diversity issue.
Waters says: "We've got 102,000 employees and each of them learns in a different way, so we look to provide information and training in as many ways as we can. The most important thing to bear in mind is that learning isn't a one-off experience. It continues, and people will be much more receptive if they can see how it fits into their day-to-day work."
BT sees a strong business case for developing a culture which respects diversity, and Waters insists that it represents far more than a pure box-ticking exercise.
"Our business is all about customer service, so to maximise the commercial opportunities presented by an increasingly diverse UK, we need to understand and respect all of those customers," she says.
Diversity and the tick-the-box mentality
Companies and senior managers who approach diversity as just one-more-corporate-gimmick-to-be-checked-off-a-list don't do real diversity any favours. It is because of just such a mentality that diversity is often perceived as soft, ineffective - a waste of time
Conversely, when companies recognise the benefits of true diversity, such as matching the customer base, increased innovation and improved morale, they realise that it delivers tangible financial benefits and better business outcomes. When those in senior management fully and consciously embrace the concept of diversity as a key value underpinning their business, diversity initiatives gain traction, and the organisation is on its way to authentic cultural change. Cultural change requires overt support from the very top to enable policies, procedures and attitudes to change throughout the organisation through concerted education.
Sometimes the only way to get the attention of those at the top is by waving the stick of discrimination claims, costly lawsuits and bad publicity, and of course dangling the carrot of an improved bottom line. And indeed these are both important drivers for taking diversity seriously, but they are only a start.
For those organisations that have used diversity strategies to get to the core of their problems and have addressed them through organisational transformation, authentic diversity is much more. These organisations are aware of current labour market forces and recognise that the way forward to sustainability is authentic inclusion of diversity.
By Diversity@work's Stuart King and Sally MacAdams.
Courtesy of Personnel Today magazine. www.personneltoday.com.
