Why Doesn’t Diversity and Inclusion Training Work?
After a series of high-profile lawsuits in the late 1990s and early 2000s, businesses started caring a lot more about diversity and inclusion. Many organisations today have some form of mandatory diversity and inclusion training for employees. While some firms have long relied on command-control style approaches to diversity and inclusion training that dictates the dos and don’ts of behaviour, Harvard professor Frank Dobbin’s research indicates that diversity and inclusion training fails to create long-term behavioural change. In fact, the positive effects of short-term education interventions rarely last beyond 1-2 days. Annual mandatory training tends to fall into “box-ticking” compliance and research shows that training that seeks to control thought and behaviour can be met with resistance and even hostility. This hostility can lead to increased animosity, especially towards minority groups, because people may feel blamed or excluded during the training. Resistance also arises because people tend to reject external controls on thought and behaviour. According to Self-Determination Theory in psychology, framing motivation as originating externally causes rebellion. Therefore, long-term behavioural change must be instigated through motivation that originates internally. According to Dobbin’s research, which comprises three decades of data across 800 organisations in the US, telling people to suppress stereotypes can even reinforce them and make them more cognitively accessible.
Corporations around the world have recognized the benefits of diversity and inclusion in their workplaces. However, the truth is that traditional diversity and inclusion training is largely ineffective and is even backfiring at times. The problem is that we cannot motivate people through control by forcing them to get with the program and punishing them if they do not. Neither can we do so through blame and shame. Instead of policing behaviour, diversity and inclusion training initiatives ought to utilise approaches that: -
seek to empower people to participate in building company culture.
encourages engagement across diverse employee groups.
inspires social accountability.