To Ask if your workplace has ever held diversity and inclusion training?

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If so, what was it and did you find it valuable?

This is something being considered for our workplace, but just wanted to hear others experiences with it. What did you feel you gained from it, if anything?

And if you're workplace aren't doing it do you think they should be?

Waste of time. Box ticking exercise. But also impossible to complain about because otherwise you’ll be seen as not a team player. So you just smile, nod and waste time better spent on actual work.

If I had ran my company I wouldn’t inflict diversity and inclusion training or events on staff unless it was a legal requirement.

Similar with the awareness days / weeks / months! The group being recognised / celebrated might like it them at the time (and even then I’m not always convinced this is true) but everyone else is sick of the emails, reminders, posters and events.

Yes online and totally rubbish. I complained to HR that it didn't cover the correct protected characteristics and only covered recruitment not how to be inclusive on an ongoing basis. No response because they don't care it's just a tick box thing and part of our stonewall rating

Also have mandatory training that nobody reads, clicks through the screens and takes the test. After a few cycles of doing it once a year you know the answers without doing the training

Every week it seems to be “pick this week’s topic” awareness week. The message gets lost because it is just seen as a tick in the box from HR

I did used to really engage in all this corporate PR but now I just want to get my job done without someone telling me what box I do or don’t fit into. Not sure if it’s because I am getting older or post covid that’s made me feel this way but I just can’t be bothered with all these initiatives anymore

We do this every year. As an ethnically Indian women I am often very surprised at some of the things that come up on it. For example, one vocal white male repeatedly asked as a Manager how do I deal with some of “these people” playing the “race card”. One women would not accept that it would not be acceptable to have bottles of wine as rewards in a team with Muslim members and quite a number of other points raised. I think it is useful to Dali about diversity and inclusion and we still have some way to go in our workplaces.

I've done multiple EDI classes over the years. F2F is usually the most eye rolling and inevitably focuses on anything except women and disabled people. So right now, I'd expect it to be gender woo nonsense and woe betide any of us who are gender critical daring to out ourselves. And if that happens in my workplace, I'm not partaking.

Same. I just fast forward through the videos and click the relevant buttons until it's complete.

But also impossible to complain about because otherwise you’ll be seen as not a team player. So you just smile, nod and waste time better spent on actual work.

100% this. There is always such a focus on the “I can bring my whole self to work” question on our annual employee opinion survey. I feel like I can’t bring my whole self as if I did and spoke up about a lot of this my cards would be marked

Yes, both for staff and volunteers. I co-facilitate the latter, and it's eye-opening just how "old fashioned" some people's views are, especially if they've been out of the workplace for a good while.

Both of my employers ran this as CBT training once a quarter. It got to be so regular that people just clicked through and barely read the screen.

Mandatory tick box exercise here. SMT didn't turn up and they're part of the problem not the solution.

I work for a multi national company but our local office is small and we have one black guy and one gay girl in our office . They are wonderful and we don't need some video to tell us how to treat them . No we haven't
had diversity training , why waste money

Annually when I worked for the nhs. It was just a PowerPoint tick list exercise, not actually affecting anything in a meaningful way.

Except we can't because we all have to do our rainbow badge training and not question how inclusive it is really to be excluding women from female spaces by allowing men who feel they are women in.

I still remember the hilarity in my 80% ethnic minority workplace at a diversity ‘training video’ in which two actors in suits standing by a photocopier pointed at another actor sitting at a desk on an otherwise empty set. ‘Look at the new guy!’ one said. ‘Yeah, he’s — black!’ replied the other.

It had the (unintended) effect of bonding everyone who failed to keep a straight face.

And this.

Yes but similar to a previous poster, I tend to steer clear unless it's mandatory. We're short staffed at present and it's crazy busy.

I've had some. It was something like a 30-minute module.

Yes. Some of it is common sense, some
of it is quite thought provoking and makes you think about your own behaviours and how you react to the behaviour of others.

Are you able to divulge the company name @Itsausername91? I'd be really interested

I've had 3 lots of D&i training. I find it so patronising.

I've done an online course. It's was largely irrelevant, they had obviously bought it in rather than having one made for our specific context, because quite a few minutes was on religious diversity, yet I'm in protected characteristic position that requires you to be a practicing Christian! I switched off at that point or rather started playing word games. I've also done enough other courses to start my own course giving company, including train the trainer so i can now give the courses to volunteers

Now it's online but at the start it was in person.

Everyone lied through their teeth and swore blind they wouldn't be predjuced against anyone for any reason ever.

Even the instructor knew it was shite.

I'll dust off my laptop tomorrow and find the info (on maternity leave atm!)

Are you part of the decision making on this OP?

I think the reason it tends to be awful is that it’s generic, bland, tries to cover everything in 45 minutes. What companies actually need to do is to identify their barriers to inclusion, and then commission targeted training to address those. Instead they just buy a standard package which tends to be patronising and just lectures people to be nice to people who are different to them - if that’s all your employees need I suggest you have the wrong employees!

A friend of mine said she had some excellent training recently, where a woman who had suffered horrendous domestic abuse talked about her experience and about how her employer had helped her. Learning from actual lived experience, with concrete examples, is very valuable.

Other DEI training I’ve had which I thought was very good included a Deaf Awareness session with two Deaf trainers who gave us an insight in to the challenges they faced, and then a discussion with a Deaf colleague about the specific ways in which we could work effectively with her. And a session on dyslexia, learning about the impact on people, tips around things like fonts and line spacing, etc - at that time I managed a colleague with dyslexia so we were able to put really helpful processes in place for her to excel.