The document discusses diversity training, what it is, why it's important, and when it started. It provides two scenarios as examples of issues diversity training can address. Diversity training aims to make employees aware of diversity issues and promote cohesiveness. It started in the 1960s in response to the civil rights movement. There are two main types - awareness training and skill-based training. The goal is to help employees understand valuing different attitudes and skills within a team can lead to extraordinary performance.

2. “Diversity: the art of thinking
independently together.”
-Malcolm Forbes, American entrepreneur and publisher of the Forbes magazine

3. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Consider the Following
Scenarios:

4. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #1
Austin is a project manager who is tasked with choosing a team for an
upcoming project. This project has tight deadlines and will require
members of the team to work late hours. Austin first chooses two
team leads, Mike and Jeff and asks them for their suggestions on the
other team members. When they come up with the list, Austin sees
that they have left out women from the teams. On questioning, he
finds out that both of the team leaders were not ready to consider
women for projects requiring late working hours.

5. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #2
A project team of 10 members includes two members of the Muslim
community. The team meets every day for a 10-minute discussion on
progress on the project. Every Friday, the two Muslim members tend
to miss the discussion as the timings clash with their prayer timings.
Their absence is causing resentment among the other members, and
the group plans to penalize the two for absenteeism.

6. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
What is Diversity Training?

7. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Company human resources departments and managers of various
departments face innumerable such scenarios day in and day out.
To handle such issues, many companies incorporate diversity
training in their training agenda.

8. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Diversity training is an initiative taken by most companies to create
awareness of diversity issues and bring about cohesiveness in
teams. But when did this concept start? And What is it that they do
in diversity training? How do you train a team in diversity? And Are
there different types of diversity trainings? Well, let’s work to
answer these questions.

9. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
When Did Diversity Training
Start?

10. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Diversity training started in the1960s in response to civil rights
movement. This laid the foundation for a black and white
equality in the workplace or for that matter, anything that
required teams to work together, even sports. The movie
“Remember the Titans” is a story based on the real events of an
African-American football coach in the early 1970s, Herman
Boone. He brought together black and white players to create a
world-class football team.

11. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Apart from color; diversity includes gender, race, religion, caste,
and disabilities. Although these are important and most
commonly discussed diversity aspects; people may show
diversity in terms of personality types (introvert or extrovert),
attitudes, values, family background, and willingness to take
risks.

12. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
It is important for companies to consider all these aspects while
building project teams. A team that has all members who are
not willing to take risks will not be an ideal team nor will a team
where all the members are risk takers. An optimal balance of
both types of people will make a successful team.

13. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Are there Different Kinds of
Diversity Training?

14. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Diversity Training Can Be Divided Into Two Categories:
Awareness-based training:
This type of training is generally used as a sensitizer for employees. It
deals with making employees aware of the importance of diversity in
business. It also makes employees aware of their prejudices and
cultural assumptions about others. The training uses case studies and
experiential exercises as the method of training implementation.

15. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Diversity Training Can Be Divided Into Two Categories:
Skill-based training:
This deals with developing employees’ proficiency in handling
diversity in the workplace. Various tools are used to take the
employees from the awareness to the proficiency stage. The
tools used help in improving employees’ interpretation of cross-
cultural differences, communication with people from different
cultures, and adaptability.

16. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
What do you do in Diversity
Training?

17. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Diversity training may be conducted as lectures, slideshows,
elearning courses, interactive games, and role plays.
All these methods have their own benefits and drawbacks. But,
each method contributes to the awareness in its own way.

18. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
The Value of Diversity

19. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
When you look at the formation of a company, whatever the
industry, you can see that it requires a team of technically-
oriented, human resources–oriented, finance-oriented, and other
specialized members. All of these members together form the
foundation of an exemplary team.

20. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
If you look closely at the team, you find that each of these
groups of people requires a different attitude and skills to
perform their work functions. And, because they have a specific
attitude, behavioral style, thinking style, and skillset they are able
to contribute to every aspect of the business.

21. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
A technical person will need to know the very factors that make
a project successful. Similarly, a human resources person will
need to know how to bring out the best performance from the
project team. Both these aspects go hand-in-hand to build the
company’s reputation.

22. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
This also is an example of diversity in the workplace. So, to
reiterate, diversity doesn’t only include gender, race, disabilities,
and the like. It also includes the team’s attitudes, educational
differences, personality types, and willingness to take risks.

23. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
The Goal of Diversity
Training

24. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
The goal of diversity training is to make employees understand
that even if there are differences amongst the team members
that they are working with, a little adjustment in one’s attitude
will make for an extraordinary team. To make them not only
tolerant of the differences that they see around them, but to
value those differences as a part of successful teams.

25. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
In addition to training, are there other ways of bringing awareness
about diversity?
Perhaps celebrating festivals of all the different cultures is one way of
creating awareness and acceptance. Some companies even create
short courses or slideshows for employees who are travelling to other
countries.

26. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Revisiting our Scenarios:

27. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Now that we have discussed diversity and diversity training in
detail, let’s go back to the scenarios that we saw in the
beginning.

28. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #1 - Revisited
Austin is a project manager who is tasked with choosing a team for an
upcoming project. This project has tight deadlines and will require
members of the team to work late hours. Austin first chooses two
team leads, Mike and Jeff and asks them for their suggestions on the
other team members. When they come up with the list, Austin sees
that they have left out women from the teams. On questioning, he
finds out that both of the team leaders were not ready to consider
women for projects requiring late working hours.

29. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #1 – Response
Not considering women for the project just because it involved late
working is not acceptable. There are many women who work night
shifts and work very well in high-pressure projects. By not choosing
woman, those team leaders are likely not selecting the best talent
available.

30. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #2 – Revisited
A project team of 10 members includes two members of the Muslim
community. The team meets every day for a 10-minute discussion on
progress on the project. Every Friday, the two Muslim members tend
to miss the discussion as the timings clash with their prayer timings.
Their absence is causing resentment among the other members, and
the group plans to penalize the two for absenteeism.

31. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
Scenario #2 – Response
Changing the timing of team discussion to a later or earlier time would
solve the issue. Discipline and resentment will not.

32. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
To bring out the best in your workforce, you need an inclusive
environment. In this age of globalization, when we work on multi-
faceted projects, we have to think above the conventional diversity
aspects of gender, race, caste, creed, and disabilities. We have to choose
a team based on a value system that will decide the individual’s capacity
to adjust, accommodate, understand, and cooperate in addition to
his/her professional acumen.

33. “No culture can live if it
attempts to be exclusive.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

34. What is Diversity Training? and Why It’s Important
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why-it-is-important/

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