According to a 2019 study by the Boston Consulting Group, most companies have a diversity and awareness training program in some capacity, but nearly 75% of employees aren’t finding value in it.
For most organizations, employees are confused about what benefit DEI training has for professional growth and organizational excellence. Investing in DEI training initiatives have grown in popularity over the course of the past decades and while policy makers have limited its presence in the US, such training programs can be a critical part in the onboarding of new employees and the reskilling of senior personnel.
In this article we’ll go over what DEI training is, how it’s applied, and why online training may not be the best option when providing an effective and meaningful DEI experience.
What is DEI Training?
DEI is an abbreviation that stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
DEI Training is specialized training that aims to educate working professionals on the issues and solutions towards diversity among colleagues, the establishment of a respectful atmosphere in the workplace, and the providing of a safe and inclusive environment for all personnel regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and/or disability.
What is the primary objective of DEI Training?
DEI training’s main goal is all about making workplaces more diverse, fair, and welcoming, especially for people from underrepresented or marginalized communities. These programs aim to raise awareness about inequality and bias, help employees treat each other with respect.
Common Types of DEI Training
- Unconscious Bias Training: This helps people spot their own hidden biases and learn ways to challenge those assumptions in their everyday behavior. Such training attempts to remove the negative stigma of stereotypes of their colleagues.
- Comradery and Allyship Training: Comradery training aims to develop cohesiveness among coworkers’ diverse backgrounds, especially those from marginalized groups. The training gives professionals the tools they need to understand common misconceptions and, to an extent, personal anecdotes of their colleagues so they can better understand their situation.
- Bystander Communication Training: Ever seen something wrong but didn’t know how to respond? This training teaches people how to speak up and intervene when they witness harassment or discrimination—even if they’re not directly involved.
- Equal Opportunity Hiring Training: Designed for hiring managers and HR teams, this training focuses on recognizing biases in the hiring process and making more inclusive decisions when evaluating candidates.
- Cultural Awareness Training: With a growing diverse workforce, this seeks to make professionals aware of the differences in cultural upbringing of specific professionals and how to respect boundaries in the workplace.
- Microaggressions: Training on microaggressions seeks to control frustrations or perceived threats when coming across individuals or professionals in the workplace who hold different beliefs or value systems that our own. It also seeks to educate about the harmful effects of negative stereotypes and promotes understanding of colleagues in courteous and professional manner.
DEI training may seem uncomfortable at first, but the primary goal is to train professionals on interpersonal skills that help make the workplace welcoming and respectful.
State of DEI Training in Organizations
DEI training has been a concerning and exciting topic among organizations. Let’s take a look at some of common talking points in DEI training programs.
Lack of Leadership in DEI Training Programs
Brandon Hall Group research reveals that “Almost half of the organizations surveyed have no clear D&I leader or efforts are led by a non-manager with other, often competing, responsibilities. Organizations that do have a senior leader or executive, such as a chief diversity officer, heading their D&I efforts are two to four times more likely to say their initiatives are successful.” It’s clear that organizations can do better, but how do we successfully move forward?
To improve the value of DEI training, organizations have to collaborate with senior management and if applicable, the chief learning officer, to discuss how DEI training initiatives can be applied in more effective manner.
Lack of Available DEI Training
For starters, Learning about DEI Issues is already inaccessible to most across the organization, including frontline workers, and is an action that promotes inclusivity. L&D departments have the power to promote change and need to take the lead in managing and measuring D&I training programs so their organizations can continue to make improvements. In some countries, new regulations are inciting change, while a number of forward-thinking organizations across the globe are willing to demonstrate equal opportunity in training investments.
Difficulty Explaining the “Why” for DEI Training
DEI Training has made organizations, higher-education institions, and business alike feel uncomfortable to say the least. Ironically, a 2017 Gallup study indicated that such training programs makes those of majority ethnic and higher income brackets feel marginalized just by being see as advantageous. The result among individuals fostered feeling of guilt and an unnecesary feel of shame.
Professionals working in the People and Community spaces of enterprise organizations begged the question on the value of DEI Training. DEI practices are omnipresent, from the hiring and screening of new candidates and promotions of managers to observing performance scores of colleagues on certain projects.
Eric Sandoshman criticized that DEI training programs and policies had no substance and were just a continuous policy experiment without data-driven evidence to prove its positive effect for both professionals and the success of the organization
DEI Training in Action Around the World
In some countries, such as South Africa and France, regulations are motivating organizations to better track and measure their D&I programs and training because they must be able to measure and report on specific metrics.
For example, South Africa’s Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) initiative requires organizations to track employee demographics and maintain a BEE rating, a credential that’s needed to operate their business. In France, there are regulations in place to support initiatives such as gender parity as well as disabled employees and others.
These regulations not only ensure that organizations forecast who they will train so that they can effectively measure and provide reporting on these training initiatives but they also demonstrate the necessity for managing and measuring D&I programs to ensure compliance. But where these regulations don’t exist, how do organizations manage what they can’t measure?
Progressive organizations across the globe are managing D&I programs and measuring the results to report findings and prioritize their actions. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for everyone, measuring diversity and inclusion helps organizations drive change. Let’s take a look at some examples:
- Slack: The business telecommunication software giant established a DEI program titled “Rising Tides” that develops a diverse group of leaders, offering training, coaching, and executive sponsorships.
- Invitae:To promote increased camaraderie, the genetics and biotech company Invitae assembled seven employee resource groups, including Women in Tech, Latinx, Pride (Rainbow Connection), Peer Soul Support (Mental wellness), Black Genetics, Veterans In Genetics, and Aznpac & Friends (Asian and Pacific Islander).
- HCL Technologies, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting company, has a program that supports women returning to the workforce after taking a break to raise a family, offering counseling, classroom training, and mentorship to support career growth. Milestones are carefully tracked to ensure women maximize their potential.
Those corporate examples highlight best practices that organizations across the world can adopt.
How is DEI Training Provided?
79% of organizations in the US use a learning management system (LMS) or some variation of an online learning portal to help provide DEI training for its professionals. Training on topics ranging from Allyship training to Sexual Discrimintation training are usually provided in the form of online training videos and excerise assignemtns provided to the employee to complete at their own pace.
The results? While most employees complete DEI training when provided online, the impact it provides on professionals is no more than a “check mark” for complete. Because of the sensitive topics revolving around DEI, providing this form of training isn’t benefiicial when delivered through pre-recorded videos and simulations.
HR and L&D professionals alike are caught in a predicament as they strive to provide quality DEI training experiences at scale with using online methods but may find themselves more often than not falling short.
Benefits of ILT-Based Strategies for DEI Training
With the size of organizations enacting DEI training programs, it’s no surprise that L&D teams around the world seek use an online training platform to help deliver DEI-based courses to hundreds of employees. The reasoning is simple: it’s scaled and efficient.
However, to develop DEI training that develops measurable results at both the personal and organizational level starts with traditional, face-to-face training.
Successful DEI Training starts with ILT or instructor-led training.
Because of the sensitive topics surrounding DEI training programs, in-person training is the preferred away in delivering an effective learning experience. DEI for that matter is one of the few organizational skills that requires in-person, human-to-human interaction to actually develop competency in the topics discussed.
The reason for utilizing instructor-led training (ILT) for DEI training stems from the daily interactions that professionals will have in the workplace and the need to apply the lessons learned. It’s one thing for a learner to say they’ve learned about microaggressions and confirmation bias in the workplace, however it’s another matter in practicing and applying it.
Methods to delivering DEI Training Using Instructor-led Training Methods
Aside from a proper L&D strategy for DEI, the core of successful training starts with the right trainer. Developing an effective DEI training program starts with utilizing qualified facilitators to lead in-person training sessions.
However, it goes a step further with DEI. As opposed to the “speak and listen” strategy, DEI training will involve face-to-face instruction between participants and applied exercises. How are these methods used exactly?
- Group discussions. Your facilitator will guide the learning session about the topic. Facilitators may use the Socratic method in discussing topics and ask for feedback between themselves and other learners.
- Testimonials. Led by the facilitator, employees/learners may be asked to share their experiences (positive and negative) to their group by which the facilitators will help draw discussion on the topic and develop solutions.
- Situational exercises. Learning by doing will be applied from lessons learned to help engage learners in the topics discussed and develop real solutions when faced with such situations on the job.
Simple Steps to Providing Quality DEI Training
- Describe the diversity, equity, and inclusion climate in your organziation: Take note of how differernt or similar your professional staff is and notate their location geographically, who they interact with (in-person and online), and notate any issues with HR about DEI cases in the past.
- Define your learning objectives and goals that can be measured: What are you looking to achieve with DEI training?
- Cover Key DEI Topics Affecting the Workplace: Provide a foundational understanding of key terms, concepts, and policies related to DEI.
- Deliver Accessible and Ongoing Training: DEI training should not rely on online-training alone. Successful DEI training relies on in-person, and guided facilitators providing meaningful discussions about issues and solutions.
Learning Analytics: Measuring the ROI of DEI Training
As the great Peter Drucker once uttered, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
The measurement of the success of DEI training programs is limited if online training methods are used as the primary format. Impactful DEI training is more than just a completed online module. Successful DEI training relies on proper training provided facilitated by qualified DEI instructors that can provide feedback for individiaul students during seminars, webinars (vILT), and small group discussions over topics.
Learning analytics can help training professionals better measure the impact of in-person training sessions for DEI training initiatives. By correlating training metrics from both in-person (ILT) and live online (vILT) facilitated courses, trainers can provide key data to the training teams and strategize on optimzing their initiatives.
What data can learning analytics capture to make DEI learning better?
- hours during ILT and VILT course discussions
- demographics of participants ILT and VILT training sessions
- qualitative and quanititatve data about participants reponses and questionnaires about topics
- training and instructor ratings on professionals’ interactions, engagements, and written responses on topics.
By understanding how much money is spent on training and who is consuming it, organizations have a greater understanding of where gaps exist and how to modify strategies. Better reporting also helps organizations mitigate risk should new regulations enforce policies around diversity and inclusion.
Ensuring Meaningful DEI Measurement
As organizations continue to use “data-driven” insights to guide decisions, it’s important to avoid any DEI blind spots. As noted in a recent Chief Learning Officer article, the person interpreting the data “can bring a biased perspective both to ‘what gets measured’ and how they interpret those measurements to drive policy.”
Ensuring that the right data is being interpreted and driving change in the best way is critical for addressing any unconscious blind spots in leadership actions. Measuring the data can provide us with powerful insights into race and ethnicity impacts, gender impacts, and effective skills measurement. Further, reporting on these measurements and implementing meaningful change is a critical step that goes beyond capturing and measuring the data.
Managing In-Person DEI Training Starts with The Right Platform
So, how do we move on to the next step of tracking and measuring key diversity and inclusion metrics so that we can better manage these programs and make meaningful changes?
Learning technologies, such as the Training Management System (TMS), can help L&D teams efficiently track and measure DEI training, understand costs, and much more. With a Training Management System like Training Orchestra, organizations can gain the right tools for managing diversity and inclusion training efforts, including:
- Analyze who they are training and how much they are investing.
- Capture different criteria such as training dollars per hour, total hours spent, or domain/training category.
- Track demographic data such as race and level of education.
Ready to learn more or need to discuss a specific DEI training project? Get in touch with our training management experts today.
