Workplace Training: Diversity Training Is an Important

Workplace Training:

Diversity training is an important step in developing awareness within an organization since it provides a venue and forum for discussion with a controlled and secure environment. Through diversity training in the workplace environment, both employers and employees are able to effectively address topics that are not frequently discussed. In most cases, diversity training in the workplace has proven to be efficient if it flows through an organization, which implies that it should be mandated training. Based on the primary objectives of the training, it can either involve the entire employee teams or functional levels within the organization. In order for this training to promote inclusion among teams in the workplace and achieve other objectives, it needs to be customized and relevant. Through customization and relevance, diversity training not only resonates with the audience but it's also applicable to the employees daily work experiences.

Dimensions of Workplace Diversity:

It's important for organizations to identify the various aspects of diversity that require the most attention within the particular context since there are numerous dimensions of diversity. Some of the most common dimensions of workplace diversity across the local and international organizations include ethnicity, gender, religion, race, age, ability, culture, and sexual orientation. Each of these dimensions or the intersection of the dimensions can have a huge impact on the organization's overall performance. As a result of the potential impact of each of these dimensions of diversity on an organization's performance, there is need for a partnership or collaboration approach in developing the training ("Utilizing Diversity Training," n.d.). This is mainly because the partnership and collaboration approach will promote the applicability of the training and influence every particular workplace environment.

Developing Effective Workplace Diversity Training Programs:

As today's workplace environments have become more and more diversified, it's important for organizations to design or develop diversity training programs that focus on inclusion as well as open, honest, and safe discussions. Some of the critical elements that must be considered in the development of these training programs include integrity, openness, humility, respect, inclusion, acknowledgement, and dignity. The development of effective workplace diversity training programs includes the following important steps:

Planning of the Program:

The effectiveness of the workplace diversity training programs is usually dependent on the efficiency of the planning stage. During this stage the organization's management should combine the training into organizational goals and practices, acquire current policies on workforce diversity, and adopt particular descriptions of diversity in the workplace. This should be followed by collection of the most recent labor market statistics, research on current aspects of workplace diversity, and inclusion of the diversity-related news into the content of the program ("Designing Effective Workforce Diversity, 2006). The planning stage should also include the establishment of evaluation tools for the diversity training before it's designed and the identification of non-training activities to support the learned lessons.

Selection of Trainers:

The next step in developing effective workplace diversity training programs is the selection of trainers since the trainers are as important as the content being delivered. The selected trainers must be experienced and skilled facilitators who can promote a secure and supportive environment for open and honest discussions. Since effective training on diversity in the workplace needs to be highly experiential, the trainers should possess strong skills for provision of interactive training exercises.

Practical Steps in Diversity Training Programs:

While developing the content of a workplace diversity training program seems to be an easy step, employees' response to the content can be risk, particularly when such training is relatively new to the organization. This is largely because of the need for the content to be neutral and inclusive to facilitate inclusion among various employee teams in the workforce. There are five practical steps that need to be critically considered in the development of diversity training programs as explained below & #8230;.

Conducting Employee Survey:

Rather than starting the process of developing diversity training programs from scratch, conducting a survey of the employees in the organization is of great importance. This is a critical step because the content of the training should reflect its recipients and the need to device a program than can address the issues that the organization's employees are currently facing.

Developing Gender Training Section:

The development of a training section on gender is a vital step because employees have a natural tendency to use gender roles in the workplace. Such section enables the participants of the training to discuss what it's like to be from either sex while working in the organization. During this process, the training needs to tackle the specific policies on gender, gender prejudice, and sexual harassment in the organization.

Ethnicity Section:

Similar to gender section, the ethnicity section should account for a huge part of the training because there is a broad ethnic variety that exists in an organization's workforce. The need for the ethnic section in the training also emanates from the fact that these workers interact with external clients from different ethnic backgrounds. While the training participants should discuss their ethnicity and those of others, it's vital to address policies that are linked to ethnicity like racial slurs and prejudice (Williams, n.d.).

Religious and Political Views Section:

In this step, training participants should be allowed to discuss the effectiveness of their employers in handling political and religious views. Furthermore, the trainers should communicate the importance for employees to respect the divergent political and religious views of their employees even though they are not mandated to agree with all the views.