Diversity Topics: 5 Most Important Training Topics

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) have risen to the forefront in companies worldwide due to a worldwide disease, polarised politics, and racial and class equality initiatives. Establishing a long-term strategy, garnering leadership buy-in, assigning proper resources, and organizing communications, learning, and education are necessary components of fostering a more diverse and inclusive work environment.

Themes used in diversity seminars and workshops are known as diversity training topics. These seminars and events bring together disparate staff members to contribute to businesses by putting their pride aside and cooperating.

As work settings change (many companies now allow workers to work from home regularly), so must online courses, content, and user experience. Like any other piece of material designed to engage customers, diversity training should be current, engaging, and updated regularly to reflect developments both inside and outside the workplace.

Understanding Diversity Topics

Here are few categories of diversity that organizations need to focus on:

1. Generational Diversity

Because your staff may span numerous generations, generational diversity is an important issue to discuss in diversity training and seminars. If these generations do not understand each other, problems may occur. There's a good chance that your staff will span three generations: Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z.

If there isn't enough training and communication to assist these generations in communicating with one another, stereotypes, false expectations, and a loss of productivity may result.

2. Intentional Inclusion

Intentional inclusion is another key topic to include in diversity training courses. Intentional inclusion entails well-thought-out action plans aimed at bringing about good improvements. It's one thing to teach your teams about inclusion; it's another to guarantee that your business has procedures in place to enable the team to put what they've learned into practice. 

Intentional inclusion teaches employees that they are all responsible for taking the measures necessary to make inclusion an actuality in their company.

3. Culture Diversity

Any organization that wishes to reap the benefits of international collaboration must invest in cross-cultural training. When you provide cross-cultural training to your staff, you are assisting them in adjusting to new cultures and reducing culture clashes when they migrate for work. Furthermore, cross-cultural training will enable your team to be more accepting of their coworkers' cultural differences. They will learn to get and comprehend, which will aid their development.

4. LGBTQ+

Almost every adult is familiar with the term LGBTQ+. Because our community has worked for an equitable opportunity for a long time, everyone knows what this abbreviation stands for. Companies should include this issue in diversity training and seminars to educate your staff that everyone expresses themselves differently. They must be open to others rather than labeling them.

5. Stereotypes

As you may know, a stereotype is a preconceived belief about a person or a group of people that leads us to believe that they are all the same. We frequently pass such judgments on people without any prior knowledge or evidence. Nobody should tolerate this type of thinking in the workplace, but it is. 

Stereotypes are harmful in the workplace because they can lead to conflict, low morale, low productivity, and other problems. Employees who act on prejudices rather than allowing their coworkers to do the tasks they entrusted will impede development.

6. Disability Rights

Disabled individuals are still woefully under-represented in the workforce, wasting precious skills, according to disability rights studies. They get paid less and face discrimination regularly.

As a result, seeing past people's limitations and appreciating the capabilities they can offer to the job can provide you with an advantage. 

• Restructure your hiring process to ensure that everything from your job adverts to the interview process is fair to all applicants.
• Make your workplace more accessible (it isn't as expensive as you would believe).
• Assistive software and equipment should be available.
• Recognize and address your own biases.

The Implementation of Diversity Topics 

These five training topics are among the most important for establishing a more accepting, inclusive, and open workplace culture:

1. Knowing the Distinction Between Diversity and Inclusion

While most people grasp what diversity is, the concept of inclusion necessitates a higher level of comprehension. The Harvard Business Review article titled "Diversity Doesn't Stick Without Inclusion": explains the difference in this fashion. The vital relationships that attract diverse individuals, encourage their engagement, stimulate creativity, and contribute to economic growth will not happen.

2. Increasing the Public's Understanding of Unconscious Prejudice

Unconscious prejudice commonly gets called implicit bias or concealed bias. It is a key stumbling block for DE&I.

Implicit bias arises when people make judgments and take mental shortcuts stereotyping someone's color, gender, ethnicity, or age handicap, or other criteria, whether favorable or unfavorable. According to a recent poll on diversity, inclusion, and belonging conducted by the American Management Association (AMA), nearly 80% of the more than 700 respondents admitted implicit bias. About 83 percent claimed they had observed unconscious bias in the workplace.

Unconscious bias training for all personnel, notably resume scanners and prospective employers, can increase awareness of the many types of unconscious bias and reduce its impact on workplace practices, policies, and processes.

3. Microaggressions: Recognizing and Responding

Microaggressions include:

• Telling a person of color how articulate they are.
• Constantly interrupting women in conferences.
• Presuming someone's sexual preference based on their looks.

These relatively innocuous comments, which are often the result of unconscious bias, have been likened to death by a thousand cuts and linked to health issues, workplace burnout, and other harmful consequences. Employees on the receiving end, witnesses, or have to get called out for a microaggression benefit from training that teaches them what microaggressions are and how to react to them.

4. Encouraging Bystander Intervention and Allyship

Bystander intervention training has risen to prominence as one of the most efficient strategies to interrupt unacceptable behavior before it escalates into unlawful harassment, thanks to the #MeToo movement.

Being a positive bystander can also help with diversity and inclusion efforts. Employees learn how to offer support and understanding for their marginalized or disadvantaged coworkers by learning different ways to be advocates and allies for coworkers who target racism, microaggressions, and other non-inclusive conduct.

5. Understanding the Relationship Between Diversity and Workplace 

Organizations can use diversity training to reaffirm anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies and practices and motivate people to speak up and report wrongdoing. According to the task force report, sexual harassment of women is more likely to appear in firms with a predominantly male workforce. In contrast, racial/ethnic harassment is more likely to happen in organizations with a single race or ethnicity.

Harassment can also result from a lack of respect for different points of view. Increasingly intense discussions about current events outside the office, according to the task group, "may make harassment inside a workplace more likely or regarded as more acceptable," providing a danger that employers should assess and manage.

Institutions that provide continuing diversity training to new staff as part of a holistic, long-term strategic plan can benefit from more inclusive thoughts and actions. It can help minoritized individuals feel engaged and linked and unleash the potential of a genuinely diverse and inclusive workforce.

Bottom Line

The facts are self-evident. Diverse businesses are more inventive, have higher employee loyalty and profit margins, among other things. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace do not have to be a time-consuming and challenging process. Use these workplace diversity initiatives to make your company's future a little warmer and more welcome for everyone.