Diversity Training Doesn’t Work

Unlike generic corporate ethics training, diversity training is capable of being evaluated relatively straightforwardly in terms of outcomes. If it works, hiring should be affected and workplaces should slowly become more diverse. The bad news: it doesn’t work. The good news: now that we know it doesn’t work, we can stop doing it, and try a different approach. >>>

LINK: Why corporate diversity programs fail, and what to do about it (by Chris MacDonald for Canadian Business)

…The goal of diversity programs is a laudable one, namely to increase diversity as a way of fighting back against systemic discrimination. The corporate world is in many ways still a male world, and a white male world at that.
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So it’s easy to see why some might think that good intentions aren’t enough, and that proactive diversity programs would be a useful thing. Except they aren’t. For evidence, Dobbin and Kalev looked at a range of programs designed to encourage diversity—including diversity training, formal grievance procedures, as well as hiring tests and performance rating systems—and their conclusion about them is resoundingly negative. The authors reach this conclusion based on literally thousands of academic studies that have found, time after time, that diversity programs not only don’t work, they tend to be counterproductive. At companies that have instituted them, diversity has typically actually been reduced….

What do you think?

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