Diversity Training Video

DIVERSITY TRAINING VIDEO

Teaching notes

By Bezrukova, K., Spell, C., and Dhillon, S.

This video is designed to introduce the topics of diversity in the workforce, stereotyping, and managing diversity through diversity training. Instructors can provide a few facts about diversity training as an introduction:

•Diversity training used in 67% of U.S. organizations (Esen, 2005).

•Anotherrecent survey of 265 HR professionals and diversity specialists found:

–55% of respondents reported their firm had a diversity department,

–over 80% reported having either mandatory or voluntary training for all levels of employees

–the diversity training business was estimated to be an 8 billion dollar industry (Hansen, 2003)

Then, instructors can play the video from the beginning to the end, or alternatively, they can pause at the end of each segment(introduction, stereotyping quiz, and commentary) and ask questions. For example, discussion questions could be:

What do you think about diversity in organizations? Does it hurt? Does it help?
Have you seen stereotyping in your workplace? Who is stereotyping? Who is being stereotyped?
Does diversity training work?
Does diversity training increase numbers of women and minorities in the workplace?
Does it have any other effect on workplaces? What is the evidence?

Instructors can further conduct a Diversity Workshop with the purpose to demonstrate that students can be both minorities and majorities depending on a situation. The task is to bring out the following points:

•Each of us has ‘multiple identities’

•Discuss the ‘minority’ experience

•Discuss the ‘majority’ experience

•Look for similarities, differences, and potential generalizations in your stories

Allow students to prepare for each question individually (appr. 5min) and report back to the class. Alternatively, instructors can run this workshop in groups of 3 to 4 students and give them 5 min to come up with the answer and report back to the class. Possible discussion questions include:

•Do you have any general observations about this exercise?

•Were some aspects of diversity harder or easier to talk about? Why?

Instructors should then focus on discussing diversity training programs themselves and what we know about good diversity training programs.Our review (see suggested readings below) shows that generally, these training programs, while addressing category-specific differences (e.g., race or gender) targeted multiple group differences (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation) (e.g., Armour et al., 2004; De Meuse et al., 2007). They were designed to increase both diversity awareness and skills (e.g., Hanover & Cellar, 1998) or, for example, build confidence in ability to change behavior to attain diversity goals (self-efficacy based diversity training, Combs & Luthans, 2007). They were relatively long (e.g., six-hour one-day training, Combs & Luthans, 2007) and employed a variety of instructional methods (e.g., lectures, exercises, group activities and discussions, etc.). Finally, participants were more likely to be invited rather than required to attend training (e.g., Armour et al., 2004; De Meuse et al., 2007; Dobbin & Kalev, 2007). Other important factors that may influence the effects of diversity training include participants’ characteristics (e.g., demographics), training design (framing and type), and training context.

Finally, instructors can do an optional exercise to get students to consider various design issues in diversity training. The task can include the following:

•You are a junior executive and you are going up for promotion. You know that:

–your chances of success for promotion will increase if you take a diversity training.

–if you get promoted, you will be managing a diverse workforce locally and globally.

•What would your ideal diversity training program look like?