The most productive and creative workplaces are the ones that value, promote, and hire a diverse workforce. An inclusive, diverse work atmosphere is naturally more conducive to high employee engagement, unique insights, and collaboration. Perhaps that’s why 67% of job hunters consider a company’s diversity when seeking work, and over half of current employees wish their workplace was more diverse, according to Glassdoor.
What Is Diversity and How Can It Be Achieved at Work?
Workplace diversity is the representation of many different races, ages, education levels, religions, and other demographic variables in all positions throughout a company. Employers can attract, hire, and retain a workforce like this by inviting diversity on job boards, offering minority-targeted internships, implementing inclusive workplace policies, and holding diversity training in the workplace. In order for a company to achieve diversity, employees must not judge others on the basis of:
- Age
- Gender
- Personality type
- Race
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Political preference
- Body type
Unfortunately, the road to full inclusion and equality in the workplace is often hindered by obstacles like unconscious biases. Thus, there’s a common need for employee sensitivity training in the workplace. In order to overcome these biases and generate a more uplifting work environment, you have to start a company-wide dialogue about what unconscious biases are and how they can be conquered — which is no simple undertaking.
LearningZen has created a free package of online diversity training courses to help businesses effectively implement equality practice. This training is specifically designed to unite your employees and propel your business forward.
The Importance of Diversity Training
Diversity, uniqueness, and creativity go hand in hand; our life experiences mold us into who we are, and the lens through which we see the world (gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.) gives us unique perspectives distinct from anyone else’s. That’s why diversity and inclusion are always the goals of HR departments, no matter the industry. If your employees come from the same walks of life and all think the same way, less creativity is likely as opposed to if non-like-minded individuals put their heads together each day to innovate, create, and learn from each other.
A sad reality is that some employees, and even some leaders, have biases against certain types of people or favor those who are similar to them whether they realize it or not. This obstacle must be overcome before maximum productivity can be achieved.
Examples of unconscious biases include males believing they can do a better job than females at a physical work task, making presumptions about an applicant based on his or her surname, or assuming that a person of a certain race will perform a task better or worse than someone of another race. Online sensitivity training brings these kinds of biases to an employee’s attention and outlines the steps needed to overcome them.
See How Diversity Training Can Help Your Organization
Unconscious bias training is a step in the right direction. No office is perfect in this regard, but if you can help even one person overcome their bias about other people, the impact on your company could be invaluable.
Request diversity training for your portal or schedule a demo to see how the LearningZen LMS can support your business today!
