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?

Worked in Adult Ed we could not log on to do any work until online training was completed.It was a right pain in the bum.

Yes, and it's all a load of shit I'd rather not do.

It’s mostly done as a corporate ass covering exercise. If a D&I case comes about, the company can then fire the perpetrator quickly and not be sued as it can say ‘sorry, they were acting outside of our policy, their actions didn’t represent our policy’.

Completely agree with those pp who've said that unconscious bias training is very good/eye-opening. I did this at my workplace a couple of years ago and learned a lot. I've said that it should be mandatory for recruiting managers but of course it isn't....

Yes, we have to do it annually. Local government. The problem is it states that gender is a protected characteristic and doesn’t once refer to sex, or discrimination against women. One of the scenarios is a man wants to use the women’s changing room at the swimming pool and the correct answer is that he should be allowed to do so.

Yes (law firms).

First firm was likely down to the fact that the CEO kept having grievances raised against him due to disliking women and older people.

Another firm had mandatory video training on induction with an audit trail to check you’d watched all of the videos. Their video on transgender training was… something special

Anyway, there’s a reason they do it. It’s to attempt to discharge company liability if one employee discriminates against another and a Tribunal claim is brought. “We did everything possible to prevent it, therefore we can’t be liable” and evidencing training goes some way towards helping that argument.

Our workplace does, in the form of a series of videos. It’s just a box ticking exercise as management don’t adhere to it at all.

DH is a diversity and inclusion officer at his place of work. He has chosen to focus on disability and ND and is trying very hard to get more disabled people into the company. It’s a STEM organisation and already multicultural with lots of women at the top.

No. We are a small private company, 14 people in the UK. We are a diverse team and work well together.

I've not seen any reason for it yet.

E-learning, some of which is useful, some just box ticking.There was one on reasonable adjustments which was interesting.

With all e-learning you get out what you put in interest wise. Most people do the bare minimum.

An ethos of good behaviour from everyone helps.

All the time. I’m lucky to work for an organisation with a very diverse workforce from an ethnic, cultural and ability standpoint where most of our senior leaders are women. I don’t find the yearly EDI training teaches me much now but we’ve had some really interesting sessions over the last few years of Neurodiversity which have certainly opened my eyes.

Delivered as online training where I work.

Fortunately there is a context menu you can access and speed up the presentation, so completed it in 5 minutes, then I could get back to actually earning the division money.

Those that did sit through it, thought it was a presentation of the obvious and a waste of time.

Oh god yes, we have masses of mandatory company trainings - online, where you click through and then have to pass a little test at the end. Usually they are American made, using cartoon characters, annoying voices and completely bloody obvious multi choice questions - tick box exercise and annoying waste of time.

We had one at work that was really good, run by facilitators whose focus was 'this is a space for you to ask questions that you have that you might feel like you'd get into trouble for in real life' (paraphrasing) and then led a session that talked about how we all have our own challenges, but some people have additional challenges due to race/sexuality/gender/disability/background etc. The big problems in our organisation are that a lot of the working class white men get very angry about the word privilege, and this actually sat people down and explained what that word meant in the context they were hearing it properly. They even talked about how it's important to ask questions (in the right environment) and do research etc if you hear something to do with equality that makes you think 'what a load of bollocks', how it's okay not to understand but important to try and educate yourself and be open to listening, it's okay to disagree as long as you don't let it affect the way you treat others. One person on our cohort took the time to then go 'and sometimes you need to understand that expressing certain views at work can make people wary of you because of X experiences in their past" and talked about a past experience they had, which opened a few eyes.
I liked the fact that they did some 'mythbusting' and then opened the floor for questions (the one about diversity hiring was great) and it really opened my eyes to how some people just repeat what they hear from others, and not do their own research on things, for whatever reason, and reaffirmed my belief that while people might think things like this are 'patronising', I think it's actually more patronising to assume everyone has the same level of understanding!
We had some great questions from people, my only critique is that it was a few hours and I think an all day event or even two days would have really put people at ease. We did have one guy who just didn't want to hear it though, he wanted to express an opinion and be heard, but just wasn't interested in listening and learning on the topic he felt so strongly about. And I don't mean he heard what people had to say and still didn't agree, he just simply ignored then and repeated himself, even if someone was explaining facts and figures that disproved what he said - he just wasn't interested, he wanted to believe what he did (which was that pushing for in organisations was a waste of time because people just hire the best person for the job) despite evidence to the contrary. Which I found very frustrating - I'm happy to have an opposing view to someone, but at least have evidence to back that view up, of which he had none.

Are you sure you weren't watching an episode of Father Ted?

Yes, NHS online mandatory training and it is neither diverse, equal or inclusive. And it misrepresents the Equality Act. And they won't change it, so thousands of NHS staff are getting 'trained' that the law is what Stonewall would like it to be, rather than the actual law. Great use of time and money.

I have just completed a course tackling racial discrimination and bias and it was extremely good.

It is compulsory at my work for all new members of staff. We also have to have regular updates, I think ever few years ( I think I last did mine a couple of years ago)

I have been in my job for many years so have done the training fave to face in the past but it is all online now
We are a university though

One was held on the 3rd floor. No lift.

The other was presented by a woman who believed that because exceptional athletes can run with a guide or propel their racing chairs for a marathon, that meant Disableds (her word) were all gold medal winners and they were really grateful that Normal People clapped them at the paralympics. She didn't appreciate me pointing out that some Disabled people found that 'aww, look, didn't they do well? Aren't they trying so hard to be like us?' and 'look, inspirational cripples - why are you moaning about access when you could be an Olympic gold medallist if you tried?' rhetoric incredibly patronising. A full on bollocking about my prejudices ensued.

And then I climbed over the tables she'd pushed around to completely block my exit, retrieved my crutch from behind her stuff where she'd slung it at the back of the room without asking if it belonged to anybody, trashed the loose papers she'd dumped on the floor as my crutch slipped on them, got a coffee from behind where she'd dumped her cases directly in front of the table with the urn (I might have spilled some very hot coffee over her case in the process), turned around and climbed back over the table to return to my seat.

She wouldn't even look at me for the rest of the session and the guy in charge (who was apparently trying not to keel over for laughing at how I was reacting, along with my buddy who had been dying a thousand deaths waiting to see how I was going to respond) apologised profusely afterwards and promised me she was never going to be booked for anything ever again.

It's a pile of wank that makes some people a shitload of money.

We had it in our place but it just focused on trans women strangely. Not the whole picture.

Mandatory in every workplace I've been in. I dont think it teaches anyone anything they don't know and isn't that helpful at intersectionality I.e if someone is a gay man from a Muslim background, exposing the bias from multiple groups to that person.

Yep, and i make a point of not attending.

I won't listen to ideological bullshit.

Yes, I work in a school and ours was really interesting. They talked about Child Q and how unconscious bias from school staff and external agencies we refer to can affect children's experience of education and lead to safeguarding failures. The trainer was of mixed-heritage and talked about the discrimination and assumptions he'd faced as someone who had been promoted to a Leadership position in schools. Feedback from staff was very positive.

Yes, as has been said, just a box ticking exercise.

Same as Unconscious Bias training. i was the person that spoke up and questioned why he was telling me how i felt about a certain situation was wrong, and that made other people speak up too.

Yes. It was good too