Did you know Corporate America spends $8-10 billion annually* on diversity training? Not exactly a meager monetary investment, yet if one considers the return on this substantial diversity investment, the results are less than impressive. In fact, as Dr. Freada Kapor Klein asserts in her book, Giving Notice, “…quantitative and qualitative findings lead to one sobering conclusion: the twenty-five-year diversity crusade by corporate America has been a costly failure leading to stunted careers, wasted money, and disillusioned observers.” Not only are many companies’ diversity trainings deemed unsatisfactory and ineffective, researchers have found that some actually increase managerial bias and result in more damage than improvement.
So why are companies getting diversity training so wrong? Giving Notice emphasizes the fundamental need to reframe and update how we approach the diversity issue in the 21st century: “…corporate America and much of the diversity consultant industry has operated, and continues to operate, under some fundamentally flawed assumptions about what works and what doesn’t.” This is a complex and multi-layered issue that will take time, effort, and dedication, especially on the part of corporate leadership. Giving Notice provides a comprehensive understanding of these current diversity challenges, as well as effective strategies to rectify them.
The Level Playing Field Institute (LPFI), a San Francisco based non-profit organization founded by Dr. Klein in 2001, focuses on removing barriers to fairness both in the workplace and in education. One of LPFI’s current initiatives is to develop more innovative, effective approaches and tools to improve diversity training. The idea is to move away from the current generic, check-the-box type trainings many of us have had to grudgingly take at our companies. Instead, we believe diversity training should be interactive, build empathy, and equip employees with perspective and effective tools to approach real-world diversity issues in their everyday work lives.
What would you like to see in future diversity trainings?
*Thomas A. Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management professor
