Diversity training - who's benefiting?

[Wherearemyminions]

Been mulling over the rise in the "industry" of delivering training etc around diversity, with the recent huge emphasis on T.

Now I've probably been a bit slow on the uptake but bloody hell, it's a lucrative no brainer isn't it? The current big thing - what school/company/public body would risk not being seen to be doing all the right things and happy to pay for it/apply for funding for it.

From a professional perspective I can't see how the results of this money being spent is actually measurable, other than boxes being ticked. Everything I have seen is just a mixture of common sense (be nice to other people) and some woolly flimflam with buzzwords.

So, happy to be told I'm being a bit tinfoil hat but who ultimately is benefiting from this gravy train? Where does this trail lead?

Diversity training - who's benefiting?

Men.

Big corporations just like lecturing their staff, they like seeing who will obey orders.

Stonewall

Mermaids

Gendered Intelligence

And others.

Yes. It's a gravy train and, like most gravy trains, is doing immense harm while the dosh rolls in.

diversity training is being used to weed out anyone who thinks differently

I attended a mandatory equality & diversity training day about 10 years ago, that had a “let’s talk about our childhoods and share our memories with colleagues” session. I found it very, very upsetting. triggering in modern parlance.

It was of no benefit to me or the organisation I worked for, but meant the public sector organisation could tick off the required box.

It was delivered by someone who was in two (poss three) minority groups, but had little wider understanding and assumed everyone in the room was racist and homophobic, including the HIV outreach workers and sexual health clinicians.

The only real benefit I could see was that the trainer went away happy, in the mistaken belief they had done a good job.

I’d be interested in knowing how much these people charge. I’m on mat leave but my workplace apparently had Stonewall training (which was heavily T and Q based) for 3 days for 40+ people. And it couldn’t count as CPD.

The equality & diversity training I was sent on was delivered by a perfectly nice chap with an emphasis on disability.

I learned nothing much on the training I did apart from the protected characteristics and some terms/names that were no longer acceptable - that was about it.

But they did at least have sex not gender as the protected characteristics.

I am close to someone who leads D&I in an international corp. What gets promoted is that which wins awards (stonewall) gets good PR (pride and specific branding opportunities) and anything which takes absolutely minimum change or financial outlay (changing the female toilet sign to GN in all offices). Corporate culture also doesn’t need to change, as it is male led and doesn’t inconvenience the leadership.
Other protected characteristics don’t even get a look in. But the org is feted as embracing diversity.
Directors meet their targets and corp gets big publicity at minimal cost to them.
Follow the money.

Diversity training for many companies is nothing more than an insurance policy and those most likely to sue will be included in the training. If an employee is accused it stops with them if the company can prove they have taken action by providing training.

I actually ran an informal diversity session in a team once. We were based all over the world and we’d had a few clashes of schedule over national holidays etc. I got us all together for an hour over webex and we each have a potted ‘in the UK/Poland/Israel etc we have x major holidays, these festivals, blah blah.’

People spontaneously talked a bit about their culture in general and specific work related stuff about their country (useful to know customs and imports basically shut down in Russia over new year!) and we ended up with a calendar/time zone primer to refer to.

It was specific to our work, no one had to share anything personal and it resulted in a bit more understanding of how we work in different countries.

I personally don’t think sexuality, religion etc is a suitable topic for the professional workplace. Nobody should be penalised or discriminated against for their sexuality or religion but you’re at work to WORK. There’s a certain erosion of boundaries with a lot of this diversity training - NOBODY should be unwillingly sharing personal information or made to reveal their sexuality or any other belief.

It's a big, self sustaining gravy train. People with no measurable skills other than their identity get jobs. Boundaries get eroded, and it allows entryism.

Diversity training has a place: it should be a review for those who need it on workplace policy and law to do with disability, access, non discrimination etc. It should not be indoctrination.

Its doesn’t work, and in fact reinforces bias in some instances:

www.forbes.com/sites/triciaemerson/2018/07/08/your-diversity-training-isnt-working-here-are-5-ways-to-fix-it/#55b2606f7900

I am reminded of the James Damore fiasco at google. I think it’s main utility is as a public relations excercise for large companies. As soon as any employee is guilty of wrongthink you fire the offender and announce a round of diversity training for remaining employees.

I remember a furore at a British Univeristy over a student who questioned attending a consent workshop. Whilst at the time I was against his position I’ve come to realise all these programs and schemes are actively dangerous if they lull the world at large into thinking they are making the world any safer for women, less racist or less intolerant in general.

I attended a mandatory equality & diversity training day about 10 years ago, that had a “let’s talk about our childhoods and share our memories with colleagues” session. I found it very, very upsetting. triggering in modern parlance.

This is absolutely outrageous. I was at a church event a few years ago where the priest got people into groups to share childhood experiences and I walked out. People at work have no such freedom.

I also attended a counselling course when the whole counselling culture began to burgeon and made a whole generation of emotionally illiterate people think that they were the reincarnation of Freud himself (who I have little time for anyway). I had to witness the group leader (a man who fancied himself as guru, sitting in the middle of the room on a cushion etc) garner support from the most powerful people on the course to systematically bully people to reveal their 'inner selves' until they got what they wanted. One woman lying on cushions, thrashing around screaming about the abuse that she had suffered as a child while the guru looked on with satisfaction. This can have done her no good and I am still fuming about it.

A sociologist called Arlie Russell Hochschild published a study in 1983 about how human feeling (especially that of women) was being increasingly commercialised - she calls it 'emotional labour'. She roughly describes how we are being trained to harness and use our emotions like actors in our work environment and how this is estranging us from our own emotions. This new diversity and inclusivity training is certainly trying to reach into our inner lives and control and manipulate our emotions and we are all increasingly being forced to act out roles in working life.

She comes from a different perspective from mine and it is s few years since I read the book but for those that are interested it is called

The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

Things have got much worse since she wrote this book.

I personally don’t think sexuality, religion etc is a suitable topic for the professional workplace. Nobody should be penalised or discriminated against for their sexuality or religion but you’re at work to WORK. There’s a certain erosion of boundaries with a lot of this diversity training - NOBODY should be unwillingly sharing personal information or made to reveal their sexuality or any other belief.

Totally agree with this. There's a lot of overreach in various organisations' diversity policies. It's the tendency to encourage everyone to 'celebrate' individuals who are somehow different from whatever the norm is in the workplace in question. It's intrusive and in many cases exclusive rather than inclusive.

It does sound a lot like management consultants, who invariably recommend you pay for more management consultancy.

Its ironic that diversity training is mandatory, they really do not want dissent

so first Stonewall did training at the primary school here.
now the secondary school has polled (the same, but now older) pupils as to the cause they want to support for non uniform day.
they chose stonewall.

My company hasn't inflicted this sort of thing on me yet.

If they do, and it shows any sign of actually being to the detriment of women, I'm hoping I'd have the bravery to challenge the fact that we only have about 22% women. We're in a science/technology sector, for which this is about the industry average, but complacency isn't good enough, especially when you're talking about >50% of the population.

The only thing worse than neglecting the interests of a disadvantaged minority is neglecting the needs of a disadvantaged majority.

This is absolutely outrageous. I was at a church event a few years ago where the priest got people into groups to share childhood experiences and I walked out. People at work have no such freedom.

Do people at work really not have the freedom to leave these sessions -particularly if they find them distressing?

I’d be interested in knowing how much these people charge. I’m on mat leave but my workplace apparently had Stonewall training (which was heavily T and Q based) for 3 days for 40+ people.

Stonewall charges £6000 + VAT for 12-36 people. But if your organization has already drunk to the kool-aid, the price is slashed to an affordable £5250.
www.stonewall.org.uk/get-involved/get-involved-individuals-communities/trans-allies-programme

Oldcrone my point really is that the employer does not have the right to place their employees in these questionable 'training sessions' that intrusively delve into the psyches of their employees who are then put in the position of having to walk out. There has been a pervasive creep in which both male and female employees are expected to give their employer access to their psychologies in ways which would have been unthinkable in my parents day (admittedly I'm going back before the flood here!)

I attended a mandatory equality & diversity training day about 10 years ago, that had a “let’s talk about our childhoods and share our memories with colleagues” session. I found it very, very upsetting. triggering in modern parlance.

I had an experience with a workshop (not D&I) I was ‘heavily encouraged’ to attend that brought up some difficult stuff. I couldn’t have justified refusing the ‘opportunity’, or explained walking out, so I sat through it and dealt with the consequences on my own time.

my point really is that the employer does not have the right to place their employees in these questionable 'training sessions' that intrusively delve into the psyches of their employees

Delving into people's psyches should only be undertaken by qualified and supervised mental health professionals, in a therapeutic context, for the benefit of the individual; anything else seems to me to be risky and unethical.

Blimey. it seems that it will be necessary for people attending such sessions who are aware of others discomfort (to put it mildly) speak up and challenge the ethics.