Workforces are growing more diverse every year, so it is important for businesses to train their workers accordingly. Diversity training provided by human resources ensures that all workers appreciate others’ strengths and talents without focusing solely on their own differences. Diversity training does this by attempting to increase employee awareness about differences throughout the workforce, along with the effect that diversity has on the employees’ performance. Also, diversity training can prevent potential problems with workforce diversity, such as hurtful stereotypes. Stereotypes lead to prejudice, which leads to discrimination, which leads to trouble as many laws, such as EEOC laws, have been put into effect prohibiting discrimination.
A few ideas for diversity training include retreats, identity explanations, and surveys. Retreats will provide time for the employees to interact with each other outside of the workplace. This will enable the employees to get to know one another’s personality, background information, and what they may have in common. Identity explanations would also help the employees to learn more about one another concerning ethnic background, age, sexual orientation, and marital status. These explanations could also satisfy the employees’ curiosity if there is any. Conducting surveys is an easy way to collect opinions about the workplace and share them throughout the business. Surveys would help to give the employees an idea about how well they are working together. In addition, surveys would provide details on what needs to be improved.
Markeeta Gaynor is a virtual intern for Braathe Enterprises