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

[postingfortrafficabout]

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?

I work for a large but not huge international company. Last year we had an American man with a beard in charge of training who pushed out diversity training that was 90% gender identity and was very proud of it. Big push from him for everyone to use pronouns etc.

I had a quiet but firm word with my (top table management) boss pointing out things including the absolute state of our “gender” pay gap statutory reporting, how women returning from Mat leave were being treated, how our premises were very inaccessible to physical disabilities oh and how they were creating legal employment risk in the U.K given gender critical beliefs being protected. I suspect other people did similar. And we aren’t in a line of business where being a pioneer on trans acceptance above other things is highly important.

Anyway Beardy man left shortly afterwards. Now we have just had broader but highly generic DEI online training. It’s still not right on gender identity but I’ve let it go. oh and the number of people with pronouns on email signature has almost vanished.

Worked for a large US company. We didn't have any.

I've had two. One attempted to combat racism by forcing people to be racist.

The other was about allyship but was really a trans PR exercise with irrelevant content from the US. Also they mentioned TERF without indicating that it's a slur and should not be used.

Both terrible.

I've recently done it as a full day in person training from someone in-house and it was actually pretty good. Talked about all protected characteristics, people talked about their own experiences etc. Using an example video of someone intervening in a situation where someone was being racially abused in public there was a bit about how we could support someone or deescalate a situation. Discussion about assumptions we can make about people. I csn see how a crappy e-learning course could be useless though.

It was like this but there's been a noticeable quietening down over the last two years. And the change in approach around disagreeing respectfully makes me wonder if there's been some activity behind the scenes to push back on some of the original training, given the various tribunal and court cases. Hopefully other workplaces will follow suit and get there. I am convinced one of our more senior people is in a SEEN network, which could explain the change of approach.

Equality and diversity ‘training’ online. It was a complete joke. Took 20 minutes max, multiple choice questions, 3 answers, and if you got it wrong there was a cheery, ‘Not quite right, try again!’

But never mind, we were all ‘trained’. Every single council employee was required to do it - it was provided by some outside agency and God only knows what it cost our permanently poverty-pleading council.

A tick-box exercise par excellence.

Council. Online e-sessions. Absolutely a tick box exercise, primary school level stuff.

Mandatory online training with a test. I don’t find it useful. I pass the test, but the questions frustrate me because they are imprecise. They are vague and do not clarify all the important sub-questions that occur to a NT brain.

So basically, the diversity training feels like it is discriminating against me.

Have done for years, now it is an online course.

@Ponderingwindow my friend at work (who has a disability) moans every time we're required to do it.

Yes, annually online. It’s biased, inaccurate and a complete time-sink.