Motives Mattter When It Comes to Diversity Training

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  ingoodcompany01/23/08 Report as spam
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  A BIt of Bias, A Bit of Reality....

  First of all, "forced diversity training" is a highly biased term. All training in a company deemed as mandatory might be called "forced." That can range from varying forms of safety training to specific job skills training for a segment of the workforce. Those who use terms like "forced training" obviously harbor some special resentment for diversity training, since they likely do not refer to other mandatory training as "forced." The idea that mandatory diversity training, as compared to any other mandatory training, is ineffective simply because its mandatory may be a huge tipoff to bias. It would be most interesting to determine the overall effect of mandatory vs. voluntary training, and see if diversity training fares any better or worse than other training interventions with respect to efficacy.
  
  Second, and related to the quote: "If you ask what is the impact of diversity training today, you have to say 75 percent is junk and will have little impact or no impact or negative impact," Bendick said.", it is probably the case that much training done in corporate America doesn't have the effect management would like it to have. This is the case for a variety of reasons, most of which should be immediately apparent to the discerning reader. Diversity training would likely be no stand out on the bell curve of quality and results.
  
  When it comes to diversity training and many other training interventions, organizations usually get what they pay for; and management usually has tempered expectations about the results. Diversity training is far from the only type of training intervention that organizations undertake simply to get the check mark, and say they did it for legal, regulatory or public relations reasons. (Ethics & compliance training, for example, sexual harrassment, or vehicle safety.)
  
  That being said, in 1995 IngoodCompany completed a study of the managment group in a large corporation (about 4,000 employees) comparing the work environment and behaviors of management employees in two business units of a company, one unit that had exposure to top quality diversity training to one that did not. The leadership in one unit flatly rejected diversity training as an option, while the other unit had embraced diversity training and had run an intervention for about five years. The outcome of the research was fascinating.
  
  Interestingly, there was virtually no difference at all in the behaviors of the mangaement employees. In fact, the behaviors and attitudinal patterns were so similar it was almost frightening. There were two separate work environments, two very different cultures and value systems, and even some fundamental dislikes between the two units. But through testing, the nature and quality of the behaviors that SHOULD have ideally been impacted by diversity training showed almost no statistically significant differences between the two groups, with one or two exceptions noted in the study.
  
  Among the conclusions reached and recommendations made: Diversity training would have little or no impact in the longer term unless significant changes were made in areas related to organizational performance management and success measures. A number of specific recommendations were made to link the objectives of the diversity initiative to managerial and corporate performance.
  
  There are a number of reasons why diversity initiatives are widely regarded as failures. But it has less to do with the intervention than with what management tends to do with the resulta of the intervention, especially with respect to meaningful patterns of behavior in the organization that can be taught, mastered and integrated into the organizational culture. Said another way, most organizations view diversity training as an event as opposed to process. Such a view dooms a program to failure from the start, and leaves it open to criticisms such as those seen here.
  
  Diversity interventions are generally hamstrung by management, particularly legal departments, before they even get started. Therein, the handwriting has been on the wall for quite some time...no less than a decade...that diversity interventions would become just another bandaid solution to an entrenched problem that reaches far beyond anything businesses can solve.
  
  However, there are things organizations can do to mitigate the impact of societal problems on the corporate culture and the bottom line. These go beyond simplistic diversity programs. Perhaps there will be a forum for that discussion elsewhere.